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THE MURDERS 




AN EXTRAORDINARY 

NARRATIVE. 



Mi 




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<r 



WAS IT A GHOST? 



THE MURDERS IN BUSSEY'S WOOD. 






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LOEING, Publisher, 

319 Washington Street, 
BOSTON. 






Entered, according to Act of Congress, in the year 1868, by 

A. K. LORING, 

In the Clerk's Office of the District Court for the District of Massachusetts. 



ROCKTVELL & ROLLINS, STEREOTYPED AND PRINTERS, 

122 Washington Street, Boston, 



DEDICATION. 



^c 



I dedicate this book to that philosophy which can argue 
without anger, can have a disbelief without sustaining it by 
insolence ; which can pause on the brink of a chasm, and, be- 
cause there happens to be no bridge by which it can cross 
over, will not proclaim to all the world that no bridge can be 
built ; to the philosophy which sees as much beauty in a doubt 
as in a solution, and has not ventured, or mayhap will never 
venture, to affix a limit to human thought, or define the pre- 
rogatives of our Lord and Creator. I do not dedicate it to 
the Free Thinker, but to the Just Thinker. The highest rev- 
erence exists oftener than otherwise in the humblest soul, and 
the night of our ignorance is lit by stars to accustom us to 
the effulgence of the dawn. The future is the poetry of our 
hope; the present our rest, from which we extend the wings 
of memory for the longer and more glorious flight toward 
the end. My work will be found to look faintly but fondly 
to those things, if it is read aright ; and so in all and everything 
I humbly say that I have no higher ambition than to serve my 

Master. 

3 



PREFACE. 

I take advantage of this antique form of literature to make 
a statement. 

The murders of which I shall have to speak in the follow- 
ing pages have been misunderstood. There was only one 
species of crime in their perpetration, and this I have from 
the highest authority. If I had thought it advisable, I could 
have pointed out the progress by which the assassin reached 
his determination, his peculiarity of character, and his motives ; 
but such a course would have detected justice to the culprit, 
not the culprit to justice. Whenever he shall be discovered, 
the evidence will be ample justification for my assertion with 
regard to the character of the crime, and reveal the darkest, 
wickedest, and most deliberate murders with which the history 
of humanity has been cursed. 

I am indebted to my friend, Thomas Hill, Esq., the em- 
inent landscape painter, for the singularly appropriate adapta- 

v 



VI PREFACE. 

tion of weird figures to letters on the cover of my book, and 

also for the very felicitous representation of the "Ghost." His 

magic pencil masters the alphabet as well as the higher regions 

of art, and I feel assured that my readers will be pleased that 

I had, in my need, so able an assistant in helping me to make 

my humble effort acceptable. 

J. B. 



CONTENTS. 



PAGE 

Preliminary Eemarks 9 

I. The Koads 11 

II. The Incidents 18 

III. The Scene 22 

IV. The Brook 25 

V. The Dogs 30 

VI. The Flat Bridge ....... 34 

VII. Suspected . 41 

VIII. The Murder Hock 45 

IX. Suspicion 49 

X. Was it a Ghost? 57 

XI. The Tests 67 

XII. Tests 75 

XIII. The Doctor's Story 94 

XIV. My Plan of Punishment 101 

XV. The Children *. .110 

XVI. Ghosts 113 

XVII. Manifestations 123 



PRELIMINARY REMARKS. 



The main circumstances that form, in part, the topic 
of my recital, excited, at the time of their occurrence, a 
feeling of unprecedented horror. They came upon the 
public sensibility with a force that even the previous re- 
cital of the bloody events of the civil war could not 
lessen. Habituation to horror had not deadened the 
public susceptibility ; for there was around the incidents 
a belt of mystery and affright that defied the approach 
of justice, and baffled private speculation. 

No necessity, even in the tortuous excuses of crime, 
was apparent for the deed ; for the victims had had no 
opportunities to establish, individually of themselves, 
hostile relations with any one, and their condition 
placed them beyond or beneath the chance of social im- 
portance. They were claimants to no estate in litiga- 
tion, stood in no man's way to advancement, could have 
produced no rivalry, had inspired neither revenge, nor 
jealousy, nor love. They had, in fine, none of those 
means that men and women have to incite to crime ; for 
they were children, and yet they were subjected to a 
fate that few, if any, children, had confronted before. 

The commission of the deed was a barbarity; its 
motives, apparently, a paradox. 

9 



10 WAS IT A GHOST ? 

Everything, indeed, about the transaction was un- 
usual. The hour, the circumstances, and the locality, 
all contributed to inspire a greater horror of the act ; 
and yet, up to this moment, no man's name, of high or 
low, bears a blemish of continued suspicion. Justice 
seems to rest, after the excitement of the instant search, 
— a search, I have every reason to know, was intricate 
and thorough ; but, at the same time, it is well to know 
that the intelligent Chief of the police department has 
only seemed to pause. His eyes have never been en- 
tirely withdrawn from the contemplation of the subject ; 
and I feel assured, from what I know, that his vigilant 
and nervous grasp will, at the appointed time, be placed 
upon the shoulder of the atrocious criminal. The mur- 
derer may have perhaps, ere this, caught glimpses, 
from his abode of gloom in another world, of those 
two spirits whose bodies he hacked so butcherly. If 
that be so, the Chief will have naught to do ; but if he 
be alive, wandering a desolate path through a desolate 
world, it may be that justice will not have waited with 
an energetic patience in vain. 



THE NARRATIVE. 



THE ROADS. 

There are two roads direct by which the scene I am 
about to describe can be reached from Boston. One is 
the steam-car road, passing through Koxbury, and drop- 
ping way-passengers at Laurel Hill Station. The other 
is the horse-car line, that, for some portion of the route, 
runs parallel to the steam. The third, and more 
picturesque, is another horse-car line, which passes 
through Jamaica Plain, and drops the passengers some 
several hundred yards west, and farther removed from 
the official terminus of the two other routes. It was 
by the second of these routes, that, on the 12th clay of 
June, 1865, two children, Isabella and John Joyce, 
started from theft home in Boston, where they were 
temporarily boarding, to spend a few hours in May's 
wood, intending to return, according to the elder one's 
promise, in time for her brother to attend his afternoon 
school. Thus it is established that the sister never 
intended to go farther than the wood first proposed ; and 
in this we have the first glimmering of the series of 

11 



12 WAS IT A GHOST? 

mysterious circumstances in which the wretched affair 
is enveloped from the beginning to the end. 

This girl was not sixteen years old. 

The boy was barely eight. 

Whatever happened after they took their seats in the 
car, and who accompanied them, or joined them after- 
ward, is a matter simply of conjecture ; and yet, as 
they sat there, these two young things, who, of all the 
rest of the passengers that looked upon their fresh, 
pleasure-anticipating faces, could have dreamed that, in 
a section so civilized, a community so guarded, a 
population so abundant, in the marginal outlines of a 
great city, that ere the sun went down, within a few 
short hours, indeed, that girl and boy would be lying 
stiff and stark, pierced, — the one, the girl, by twenty- 
eight poniard stabs, and the boy by enough to have 
killed the captains of a full regiment ; the girl dead in 
the hollow of a rock within thirty feet of a public road, 
the boy less than a quarter of a mile away, in the dense 
shrubbery, by a tiny stream that flows through the 
shades of Bussey's wonderfully beautiful woods ! 

Now, this wood of Bussey's — at present in the 
possession of Mr. Motley, one of the heirs by marriage 
— is a subject of frequent thought to the writer of this 
narrative. It was so before it became the witness to 
the murder of these two children ; after that, while of 
course losing in sentiment and by association some of 



WAS IT A GHOST? 13 

its innate and sympathetic loveliness, it ever wore the 
weird aspect of a mystic realm ; but now is added that 
terrible consciousness of a fright, a terror, pervading all 
its recesses. The wood lies about six or seven miles 
southward of the Boston State House, on a county 
road, and its summits are lofty enough to afford a view 
of the city and the rattlesnake infested Blue Hills back 
of the Mattapan, more southwardly yet. 

The wood, as you approach down the road from Mr. 
Motley's gate, presents the aspect of a hill of pines, 
dark and massive ; but, crossing the fence that keeps it 
from the highway, you are almost at once in the midst 
of a mingled growth of birch and beech and willows ; 
beneath these passes the brook, near to whose bank 
was found, farther up, the body of the boy. Old Mr. 
Bussey, it would seem, was a man of droll, yet pictu- 
resque fancies, mingled with a sturdy sense of the 
useful; for no sooner are you free of the pasture land, 
and in among the trees, than you discover traces of his 
handiwork. The path you are upon is broad and well 
constructed, leading to a solid bridge of masonry ; and 
well may you pause here to take in the full effect of the 
scenic entanglement. On your right is a fish-pond, 
fringed with the swamp willow, and of sufficient 
capacity to contain fish enough for a council of cardinals 
during the abstinent clays of Lent; and near by a 
spring of water, so cold that ice is never needed by 



14 WAS IT A GHOST? 

those frequent pzcnic parties that, up to the period of 
the murders, sought these delicious retiracies for holiday- 
festivals, or love's deeper and sweeter plans of recreation. 
Crossing this lower bridge, and passing over a road 
with velvety grass borders, you turn to your left, and 
if you have the time from sandwiches and other 
condiments, or are not too absorbed in emotions that beat 
marches to the field of matrimony, or much elaboration 
of flirtation, you will see the steep ascent, bearded with 
huge pines, and covered with abutting rocks, looking 
like the base of a minor incident of Alpine precipice. 
If you choose, there is a wild pathway made among the 
zigzags, and this you can pursue until the summit meets 
you, with the recompense of a noble prospect, but with 
your muscles somewhat demoralized. Did those children 
take this route ? 

Along the ridge, a broad walk leads to the spot where 
the wounded-to-death body of the unhappy girl was 
found. But, if you think otherwise, in your humor of 
unsettled choice, you can turn to your right, and, 
winding around the base of the hill, through dwarf 
pines at first, and heavy timber afterward, stroll on 
until you reach the scene of the primal tragedy. Did 
they go by this way? The wildness, the solemnity, and 
total seclusion of the place, even in the broad daylight, 
ire oppressive to the imagination, if you happen to be 
alone. Company in a graveyard, at midnight, destroys 



WAS IT A GHOST? 15 

in some measure the unpleasant sense of other than 
human propinquity; and it is the same in a modified 
form, in this umbrageous condensity. By all but 
hilarious picnic parties, the solitude and seriousness of 
a wood is admitted ; and this wood is one of the most 
unique I have ever visited. But, since then, it is no 
simple congregation of trees and rocks and mysterious 
paths, — no longer a sylvan asylum of perfect repose, 
inviting to reverie, to pleasure, or the interviews of 
love, sweetened by the security that shadows of leaves 
throw upon the blushing hieroglyphic of the cheek, or 
the deeper and softer and better understood language 
of the eyes. . A gloom is here established forever. It 
is a witness of that most terrible of tragedies to which 
our human condition is liable. The knife of the 
murderer has gleamed here, — the cry of the victim 
been uttered. It is haunted! Haunted by what? 
Who can tell? By ghosts, or the idea of ghosts? It 
makes no difference which. In such cases, where logic 
is shattered over a catastrophe, imagination lifts up the 
fallen form of contracted reason, and ministers to its 
inability. Man does not always demand facts ; or, 
rather, in the solving of the many difficult problems 
that are suggested by special and eccentric occurrences, 
he does not demand an iron-clad testimony, — a testi- 
mony not in accordance with the fact under inquisition. 
The existence of a thing is to be proved by evidence 



16 WAS IT A GHOST? 

that can apply to the nature of its existence. The 
intention of Byron's brain cannot be proved by the 
same process you would take to prove that the ocean 
over the Banks of Newfoundland is not so deep as in 
its centre. If we waited for facts in proof of what we 
cannot directly understand, we should starve mentally, 
or go mad. Air is invisible, but it exists. It is here ; 
it is yonder. It is more keenly felt by animals whose 
skins are thin. The armadilla, possibly, doubts its 
existence, unless he has the gift of seeing it ; but the 
hairless dog of China is no sceptic on the subject of 
atmospheric changes and attacks. Man, exposed, to the 
blast, feels it more sensibly than the elephant placed in 
the same current. The opinion of the armadilla, or of 
the elephant, has nothing to do with the fact of the air's 
existence. The former animal recognizes a tempest, 
not by what he feels, but what he sees ; and if he sees 
wind, then I give up my illustration, but not my 
argument. He sees a vision of flying dust, broken 
branches, prostrate trees. Possibly he draws his de- 
ductions from the theory of the sliding faculty of sand, — 
which phenomenon he has, perhaps, suffered from; and 
he has seen trees overturned by sand-slides, and, as the 
tempest beats unfelt upon his adamantine scales, he 
thinks the sand-power is at work, and would debate all 
day with any thin-skinned animal who would assert that 
it was done by a tempest of air. " I never saw it, I 



WAS IT A GHOST? 17 

never felt it," Signor Armaclilla would perpetually 
growl forth ; and, so far as he was concerned, the air 
would be sand, and his neighbor a credulous, half-crazy 
believer in a thing perfectly intangible. He never 
could attribute the results of a tempest to any force 
which is not within the range of his experience. He is 
where he was, but the oak is w T here it was not. He 
stood upon a sound place, the oak upon a slide, — that's 
all. There was no hurricane. Thus it is that while a 
thing may exist, it may not always be apparent, and if 
apparent, only to a few. Men take views according to 
the texture of their mental cuticle, mercurial or other- 
wise, thick or thin; and can decisions based upon such 
capricious contingencies be accepted as a philosophic 
solution of a doubt, or a truth? But I shall, farther on 
in my recital, have to deal more practically with this 
topic, because I shall be drawn to its revelation by the 
inevitable force of circumstances and incidents. 
2* 



n. 



THE INCIDENTS. 

Two months previous to the murder of the Joyce 
children I had been residing at the house of an 
acquaintance, a mile away from the village of Jamaica 
Plain. The front of the house looked out upon the 
road leading from Boston and passing through the 
village of Jamaica Plain far away into the back country, 
and onward, — a pleasant drive for those city dwellers 
who had only afternoon opportunities for rural inhala- 
tion. The rear of the house gave view of a meadow 
watered by a tiny rivulet and up to the woods of 
Bussey. This rivulet was the one that went by the 
body of the boy, and where it was concealed by its 
woods and weeds. The distance from our back porch 
to the spot where the body of the boy was found, was 
about four hundred yards, and to where the body of the 
girl was discovered, probably twice or thrice that 
number ; so I was rusticating near the footlights of the 
theatre, little dreaming that, when the curtain rose, how 
terrible would be the drama that would drip the stage 
with blood. 

I have long since made up my mind that the most 

18 



WAS IT A GHOST? 19 

extraordinary events transpire from a condition of 
repose, else we would never be startled. The first 
earthquake is the terror ; the residue are but affairs of 
mercantile and architectural speculation. Whatever is 
striking is struck quick. The practice of the prize ring 
is the theory of wonders. The shoulder of a man 
propels a complex system of muscles, and a man in front 
has his countenance smashed. The suddenness of the 
experiment accounts for the surprise at its result. 
Preparations for great deeds are not always apparent. 
A coup d'etat is such because it is a coup. The killing 
of Mr. Lincoln was more astounding as a positive deed 
than the beheading of Charles the First, or the razoring 
of Louis the Sixteenth and his Queen, daughter of the 
Caesars. In the case of the President, silence and 
mystery kept pace with the public confidence in his 
personal safety; in the case of Charles and Louis, the 
politics of a people had long been disturbed and 
outraged with regard to the traditional sanctity of 
kings, and there was preparation almost evidently 
looking to the final result, and the prelude, from the 
very nature of those governments, admitted of hardly 
any other epilogue ; but with Mr. Lincoln it was 
different. He sat in his box at the theatre, secure, in a 
war brought to a result suitable to his designs, with 
pleasant painted scenery before him, a comedy of 
brimming humor in course of acting, altogether in the 



20 WAS IT A GHOST? 

very last place he or any one expected that the blow 
upon his life would fall ; but it fell, and the world was 
astonished. Thus, — with the meadow and its brook 
before me, with the grand belt of woods bowing over 
the fence, with the soft air of summer in the boughs, 
with the mowers in the grass, with the sunlight blink- 
ing through flower-stems and vegetables of homely 
nomenclature, but admirable qualities, — I sat in the 
porch of my summer dwelling ; and while I sat there, 
musing and idling, a deed was done, so wicked, so 
ruthless, so hideously unessential, that even now, after 
the lapse of so long a time, I feel the need of a new 
word, — a word with the thunder and the lightning in it, 
with the curse of man and the anathema of God in it, 
to express the sensation it produced. 

Those woods w T ere to me a delight beyond all 
computation. To look at them, to go into them, to sit 
underneath them, to w T atch by the hour the veins of 
moss and the bark of the tree boles, to follow the 
curvature of the limbs as they grasped at the white 
clouds passing, to see the blue eyes of the sky peeping 
at me as I stared at them, to listen to the nothings of 
sounds that all men have heard in the sy Ivans, to forget 
in the balm of the scene the bitterness of memories and 
knowledge, — furnished me a mighty feast of harmless 
and negative enjoyment. With these feelings which I 
have not exaggerated, — keeping in view this sanctity of 



WAS IT A GHOST ? 21 

nature, for so many centuries uninvaded by any crime, 
save and except that doubtful one, of lovers meetiug 
there to love outside of domestic parlors, — I perhaps 
more than anybody else was personally outraged at the 
act which not only destroyed human life, but smote the 
peace of the presence which Heaven had bestowed upon 
the scene, sublime in its ministering to a waif out of 
the wreck of revolution. I feel confident that to those 
persons who indulge in the faculty of thought beyond 
counters and desks, I need make no excuses for these 
digressions ; for they will at once perceive that I am at 
least exhibiting one phase of the prelude to those 
terrible atrocities. The incident of my vicinity to the 
spot has great weight with me in the writing of this 
narrative, as it would be to those persons, who, though 
not being able to witness the actual battle, see the 
smoke of the conflict and hear the reverberation of the 
dread artillery. 



m. 



THE SCENE. 

It was on Sunday evening, the 18th of June, that we 
had the first intimation of what had been going on in 
those great shadows opposite to our house. I was 
sitting on the eastward porch, — which I said before gave 
a lookout toward the wood, — and had been sending up 
my quota of cloud to mingle with the fraternity of 
vapor around the setting sun (my pipe, my laboratory), 
when, as the shades grew purplish down in the ravine by 
the brook, I heard repeated shouts. When an ordinary 
stillness is violently broken, there follows a shock to the 
nervous system, repeated upon it by sympathy with the 
divinity of silence whose reign has been disturbed. 
Sometimes terror commences at once her frantic flight 
over all the barriers of reason ; and again, anger beats 
back the blow with imprecation. But when the long- 
continued hush of a great forest, the mystic sleep of 
rocks and trees, of air itself pervading a radius of miles, 
is suddenly and sharply interrupted by that peculiar in- 
tonation of human outcry, which declares an event out 
of the ordinary train of circumstances, and when those 
outcries reach us out of thick concealment, wonder and 

22 



WAS IT A GHOST? 23 

dread assume control of our faculties, and make us 
pause almost in our breathing, to catch some other cry 
of different character by which we can determine the 
cause and nature of the first. I had heard from the 
paths and shades of those woods, during the summer, 
various kinds of human noises ; but none of them ever 
reached the mad gamut of the one which had smitten 
the air but a moment since. Those other cries came 
from children, grown and ungrown, romping in happy 
energy along the glades, — from picnic parties calling 
to each other and replying as they separated after the 
feast of sandwiches, — and I had got to understand them 
all ; but here was a yell that had in it the modulation of 
groan and spasm, uplifting of hands and straining of 
eyes, relaxing of muscles and whitening of faces, with 
stops put upon it by the fluttering pulses of the fright- 
ened heart ; and imagining nothing of anything terrible 
that could have happened under that so pleasant roof of 
waving foliage, I sat paralyzed in the abruptness and 
terror of the interruption. But I was not kept long in 
such suspense. The news now came up from the dell 
that the body of the missing boy was found. The 
search of police and citizens had been conducted on the 
principle of an open fan with the handle held by the 
chief at the house where the children had been living. 
Thus the whole region on either side of the route known 
to have been taken by them was thoroughly gone over 



24 WAS IT A GHOST ? 

and examined, until the pursuit, almost despairing of 
success, reached the Bussey wood, expanded around 
the base of the hill, leaving no clump of bushes unex- 
plored, until, upon that quiet Sabbath evening they 
found the poor boy lying dead in the midst of a thick 
screen of alder-bushes. Soon afterward the girl was 
discovered, but not, I believe, by parties actually 
engaged in the search. Two men unsuspectingly, per- 
haps unknowing of anything about the missing ones, 
strangers, it is to be supposed, and in the woods for a 
Sunday's stroll, came upon a group of rocks lying a 
little off from the path at the southern terminus of the 
hill, and overlooking the common road of the county 
that leads to Dedham. Here, stretched in the rugged 
fissure of the rock, or rather in a basin at its base, lay 
the stabbed corpse of the sister. Another alarm, and 
the second part of the drama was concluded. 



IV. 

THE BROOK. 

So this much of the mystery was explained. 

These children had left their home a week before, 
purposing a little trip, that was to last only a few hours, 
to May's wood, midway or thereabout between their 
starting-point and Bussey's wood, where they were sub- 
sequently found dead. During all that week of 
vigorous and unwearied search by the police of Boston 
and Koxbury, joined in by that of the rural localities ; 
while the sun shone so bright and peace seemed so per- 
fect over and within that green glory, while hundreds 
of people as usual, suspecting nothing, came into 
and went out of old Bussey's groves ; these two dumb 
humanities lay, — the girl, with her poor fright-marked 
face towards the sky, appealiug to it for testimony and 
redress, the brother prone to the earth by the sly little 
running stream, both stabbed over and over again, — for 
thirty-four times did that mad arm rise and fall, — their 
bodies rough with the clotted gore of their hideous 
wounds. The public stood awe-struck in the presence 
of this spectacle, and parents trembled when they saw 
such evidence of duty neglected in allowing these waifs 

3 25 



26 WAS IT A GHOST ? 

to wander so far away from home. (Or were they ac- 
companied, and by whom, when they went away?) For 
a time the junior members of families had to confine 
themselves to a more restricted sphere of locomotion, 
and the thought of murder haunting them drove them 
like curfew to their homes at dusk. The latitude here- 
tofore extended to, or wrenched by, Young America 
underwent a revision, and the juvenile eagles and doves 
of the social roosts were forced to bend to the yoke of a 
new dispensation, the justification of which was found 
in the fate of those two hapless wanderers who had been 
found slaughtered in the woods of Bussey. Seldom, in 
the annals of crime, w T as there so great an excitement as 
was manifested, not only in Boston, but throughout the 
entire country, when the fate of the lost children was 
made known by the public press. In one week after- 
ward the woods were daily crowded by people from the 
city and the suburbs, with parties from the distant towns, 
and I met one man, wandering about in a white state 
of nervousness, wyho said he had come from Maine 
to look at the localities. An artist of one of the New 
York illustrated papers, with whom I went over the 
w r oods, in company also with a policeman who had been 
detailed for the purpose of pointing out the spots to the 
man of wood-cuts, told me that in New York the 
murder of these children had caused a greater excite- 
ment than the killing of Mr. Lincoln. I could well 



WAS IT A GHOST? 27 

understand that, — for the one was in its chief features, a 
political event, while the other appealed to the common- 
est sensations of our nature, through the avenues of 
mystery. On one Sunday alone, I was told by one of 
the rural officers, that more than twelve hundred people, 
men, women, and children, had visited the blood-stained 
places of the murders. 

One great misfortune was inevitable from this sudden 
and continued irruption, and that was the total extinc- 
tion of any foot-track of the murderer, or any vestige 
of his garments which might have been torn from him 
in the struggles with the stronger girl, or the con- 
jectured chase he made in pursuit of the fleeing boy ; for 
strange it was, that the bodies were found separated by 
several hundred yards of distance, an interval of dense 
wood and shrubbery closing in in all directions.* The 
one, as I said before, was killed on the summit of the 
hill ; the other, at its base. As strict an examination as 
it was possible to effect was instituted, by the police 
authorities, of all the paths leading to the two spots of 
deepest interest, of every brake and shaded place ; and 



* Since I finished writing my narrative, a friend has informed me, that, visiting 
the wood sometime after the discovery of the bodies, and while searching for 
the exact spot where Isabella Joyce was discovered, he picked up a portion of 
an old green coat, or some other habiliment, and carried it out in the road to 
his friend, who was waiting in the carriage the issue of his search, to show her, 
in joke, as a relic of the murderer's dress. His friend instantly grew serious 
over the matter, and to this day believes it to have been worn by the man who 
did the murders. 



28 WAS IT A GHOST ? 

very useless was it soon found to be in the vicinity of 
the death-scene of the girl, — for there the ground was 
dry and rocky ; but where the boy was found the soil 
was moist, and had not the paths been constantly 
travelled over during that silent week and afterward, it 
was there that some clue might have been found, the 
footsteps of the assassin evident, kept there by that in- 
scrutable and puzzling fatality that frequently attends on 
such events. The party of discovery, however, not 
having the police presence of mind at the moment when 
they came upon the desolate object, obliterated, by an 
unconscious complicity with the assassin, and demol- 
ished, in their eager rush, any marks he might have left ; 
for at least to that body no one had approached, and the 
footmarks of the only living witness and actor must 
have kept company with the bloody corpse throughout 
that interval. Thus everything tended to shield the 
doer of the deed. The dry ground and flints around 
the girl ; the very solitude of the boy's last asylum, to 
whose protection he had fled with the breath of his pur- 
suer hot upon him ; the rain that fell afterward, and that 
fatal week's concealment, — gave him ample time to per- 
fect his plan of evasion ; and well did the demon use his 
opportunities ; for, up to this moment, the public is in 
possession of no clue by which he can be brought to the 
expiation, if human expiation be possible, of his un- 
paralleled offence. Whatever may be known to the 



WAS IT A GHOST ? 29 

mysterious agent of legal vindication, the keen-eyed 
chief, we cannot discover ; possibly there is nothing to 
discover, though I do not agree to that; he may be 
waiting for one of those redressing incidents by which 
the chain of evidence is united, — incidents simple of 
themselves and reaching forward out of doubt and diffi- 
culty, and helping the law to a fulfilment of its in- 
tentions. 



THE DOGS. 

Axd during all that week I had pursued my usual 
monotonies, happy that they were such, tired to death 
of battles, and the bulletins of newspapers, which had 
added such a tangle of falsehood to the wickedness of 
slaughter ; happy that I was where I could see the sun 
rise and go clown without touching with his ray, so far 
as my rustic horizon was concerned, a soldier's tent or a 
soldier's grave ; moping, in the very licentiousness of 
laziness, with my seraphic pipe between my teeth, over 
a thousand trifles, such as ingoing and outcoming of 
shadows on the leaf-domes of the woods ; enjoying the 
soothing spasm with dinner of green peas, fresh pulled 
from vines that in my airy fancy called back old travels 
through the low shrubbery of the French vineyards ; 
having now and then a townsman's visit to cheer me 
back, if cheerful it be, to a consciousness of taxes and 
municipal street-sweepings, of city lamps lit up as reg- 
ularly as the night came down, — a visit that in its way 
was as pleasant to me as the old trees or the gray rocks 
crowding around their base ; a friend to sit with me in 
the old back porch and look at the grand wooding of 

30 



WAS IT A GHOST? 31 

that desecrated hill, to sip with me the test of hospitali- 
ty, and smoke the pipe of peace in the peaceful air that 
takes no offence at the indulgence of any method by 
which honest men earn the recompense of honest living ; 
avoiding all topics of scandal, blessed in that rural 
asylum in the absence of all objects of scandal ; going 
into the woods now and then and often, out of which, 
like Peter the Czar, I had built my city and peopled 
it with my own people ; and all the time so ignorant 
of the two dead children who lay within easy range 
of my vision. There they lay all that festering week, 
and here was I so near to them, following out the idle 
purpose of a perhaps useless life, — they perhaps of no 
greater use to all the world in their dead slumbering 
than I in my grand philosophy of lethargy. 

My host was blessed with two dogs, and, very oddly, 
they bore the same name, Jack. One was a bull-dog, 
but, strange to say for his breed, of a sweet and even, 
more than common, Christian disposition, inasmuch as 
I never knew him to turn from the person he had once 
elevated to his friendship. In his firm, calm old face, 
there was nothing of deceit. Making his protestations of 
love to you in his own way of muscular revelation, 
you might be sure of his proffer, and that he never 
would trick you out of your confidence. I have known 
bipedical bull-dogs do otherwise ; and they turned out 
afterwards to be such arrant cowards that even my 



32 WAS IT A GHOST? 

solemn Jack, could he but have become acquainted with 
their behavior, would have swept them out of the 
sphere of respectable personalities by the vigor of his 
superhuman sincerity. The other dog was a fighting 
character, and as such I had not much sympathy with 
him, — war on a larger and more brutal scale had sufficed 
me, — and yet about him there was a geniality and 
honesty and pluck, that forced you, while you recog- 
nized his "belligerent rights," to offer him your re- 
spect, — at least I did ; and so there were times when he 
was allowed to accompany my placid Jack and myself 
in our woodway journeys. Friendly as they were with 
me, there was another whom they loved with the fervor 
of canine Abeilardism, and that person was their mas- 
ter, my host. I mention this fact now because it bears 
upon an incident of a very extraordinary nature, and 
which I will state in its proper place. 

At present I have but to add a few words about these 
clogs. Though they bore the same name, they perfectly 
understood when they were separately called ; that is, 
they comprehended their own individuality as we in- 
dividualized them. I never knew them to make a 
mistake. Thus it was, Jack the gentle was never ad- 
dressed, or had his name called, except in just such 
terms as we would use to a human being gifted with his 
rare qualities. Jack the fighter, hard-biter, great cat- 
worrier, knew when he was spoken to well enough ; for 



WAS IT A GHOST? 33 

the manner of the family was such as they would use 
to a retired or active member of the prize ring, a tone 
half of uncertainty and the other half of admiration. 
They were, in fine, two distinct characters, bearing the 
same name ; but our voices being adapted to their 
peculiar idiosyncrasies, they sensibly drew the line of 
distinction in sound, and understood us. 

It would be worth any one's while to get two such 
distinctly different dogs in character, and try the 
experiment of similar names. It might at least afford 
Mr. John Tyndall, LL.D., of England, some hints to 
his theory of sound. 



VI. 

THE FLAT BRIDGE. 

So one week had passed since the committal of the 
murders and the discovery of the bodies, — and the 
bodies lying in a wood so frequently, indeed so con- 
stantly and largely visited. One would have supposed 
that they would have been discovered half an hour after 
the deeds were done ; but, to understand why it was so 
long concealed, you must visit the wood itself in the 
leafy month of June, and then you will find out what a 
hiding-place it can be turned into. Now the spot 
where the boy was found was a few feet from the little 
stream frequently mentioned, and this stream was 
spanned by a flat bridge just enough elevated from the 
surface of the water to allow it to flow freely under- 
neath. This bridge led over to a half-obliterated path 
that you could with a little care follow until it brought 
you to the regular path that led from the lower bridge, 
and which I before observed conducted you to the rock 
where the girl was found, and farther on to a spot 
which I am soon to speak of. This lower part of the 
forest is composed of open spaces filled with low 
shrubbery, small and close-growing pines, and by the 

34 



WAS IT A GHOST ? 35 

brook -way with densely thick alders. There is a wall 
running west from the brook, dividing the property of 
my host from that of Mr. Motley. Mr. Motley's prop- 
erty, along the wall to the north-west, is composed of a 
wood of great beauty. The path to which I have 
alluded connects with the main county road that circles 
Bussey's wood to the east, and it was by this path that 
my host was in the habit of returning from his daily city 
business, sometimes a little after sunset, but generally 
not earlier than nine at night, and frequently later. 
Relative to this circumstance I have hereafter something 
of an extraordinary character to make mention of; so it 
may as well be remembered. 

The low, flat bridge was about fifty feet from the 
corner of the dividing line, and less that distance from 
the scene of one of the murders. Near to it ran the 
path my friend had to pursue on his return at night. 
In my walks, before the murders, I had passed over this 
bridge almost daily, and afterward, during the sealed 
week, I had not interrupted my habit, though probably 
I did not go that route as often as before, for the 
weather was getting intensely hot, and kept me to the 
woods nearer the house. In these walks, however 
frequent or seldom, I was accompanied by old Jack; 
and though the body of the boy, at one part of the 
track, lay not more than ten or fifteen feet away on our 
left, hidden in the shrubbery, the dog never attempted 



SO WAS IT A GHOST? 

to approach it. I remembered afterward, when 
everything was revealed, that as soon as we got over 
the bridge, he would walk quietly at my heels, keeping 
as close to me as possible : but when I had advanced to 
the denser wood, that clothed the base of the hill, he 
was all alive, plunging in every direction, and opening 
with a courageous vigor upon the up-tree, defying 
squirrels. I blamed him much for his reticence ; for I 
felt assured that both he and his namesake had, before 
that, perhaps on the very day of the deed, gone into 
that dense mass and gazed upon the slain. Be it as it 
might, his manner changed completely whenever we 
passed by that red resting-place. 

On the morning of the murders — the 12 th of June 
— I had prepared myself for sketching (I have that 
gift, moderately to be sure, but yet with wonderful 
kindness extended to me by a beneficent Providence), 
intending to make a memorandum in oil colors of a 
group of rocks a hundred yards or so beyond (east- 
ward) the murder-rock, and to which I have already 
referred. These gray rocks, that I intended to sketch, 
can be seen from the road leading up to the hill, by 
which you reach, from the direction of the railroad, the 
outer scarp of the ridge behind which the girl was found. 
And this is the route by which the children may have 
reached the wood. 

As the sun rose higher in the heavens the heat 



WAS IT A GHOST? 37 

increased in proportionate intensity, and when I was 
ready to start, say about half-past ten o'clock, I was 
glad to second the persuasions of my friends not to 
venture out in such seething weather. Probably it was 
providential, or possibly a great error, that I did not 
accomplish my original design. To reach my objective 
point — the picturesque rocks which had so fascinated 
my sense of the beautiful — I would have been obliged 
to follow the path, first over the low bridge, and subse- 
quently within six or seven feet of the spot where the 
body of Isabella Joyce was first seen. Now, it is a well- 
ascertained fact, that the children left their home by the 
cars sometime about eleven o'clock on that morning. 
Their intention was simply to go to May's wood, nearer 
to Boston than Bussey's. What induced them to change 
their purpose, and advance as far as the latter, is 
partially a mystery ; and though I have a well-digested 
theory upon that very important — indeed, all-important 
— point, I must withhold it ; for well I know that if he 
is alive, one of the first persons to read this narrative, 
on its publication, will be the murderer himself, and I 
cannot afford to give him farther chance to plot expla- 
nations and arrange evasion by any word of mine. 
Leaving home at about eleven, in three-quarters of an 
hour, or less, they could reach Bussey's wood (for I 
take it for granted they did not tarry at May's wood, 
persuaded by some one to go farther off from Boston) , 
4 



38 WAS IT A GHOST? 

say, about twelve o'clock. Give them time to gather 
leaves and wreathe them, as they did, — a wreath being 
found around the boy's hat, and portions of wreaths 
about the murder-rock, where the girl had evidently 
been employed in such amusement, — and we reach half- 
past twelve, or perhaps a little later; and that is the 
time I have fixed as the epoch ; for after that, whatever 
of garlands were woven, were made by hands we cannot 
see, but only hope to see. Now, had I not changed my 
intention to sketch that forenoon, I would have passed 
by the path beyond which, hidden by the woody screen, 
the girl was afterward sitting, and also grazed the spot 
whither the boy had fled, or been thrown ; but it would 
have been before they had entered the wood; but I 
would have been at work at the moment of the killing, 
or, mayhap, passing within a few feet of the place where 
Isabella Joyce was murdered, or, after being murdered, 
concealed. 

If, in passing at the moment when the deed was in 
the act of accomplishment, and I had heard a cry ever so 
feeble, I would, unquestionably, have proceeded to 
inquire into its cause ; and had I come upon the brute, 
and been at the instant in possession of as mnch pluck 
as I had weapon, — an iron-clasped, well-seasoned, 
heavy camp-stool, — he would have fared badly; for, 
once up, my arm is one of very admirable development, 
and my temper not the best calculated for easy martyr- 



WAS IT A GHOST? 39 

dom, and I might have saved her life at least, and in 
doing which, an incident might have happened which 
the fiend would not have had time to remember — in the 
flesh. Or, if I had not passed at that exact exigenc}^ of 
time, but was engaged in my sketching, I possibly 
might have been startled by her outcry for mercy from 
him, or appeal to others, and by the manhood that is 
systematized, for the defence of the weak and wronged, 
in this six-foot carcass of mine, I would have gone with 
utter ferocity to the rescue ; but with what success 
crowning my enterprise, is only known to the* Great 
Inscrutable. However, had the murderer accomplished 
his bloody purpose on the girl, and was following the 
boy, and I had passed downward to the level bridge, I 
might have seen that supplemental tragedy, or arrested 
it, and taken the culprit red-handed in his course. I 
would, under any of these circumstances, have been 
more happy in my life, had I been the means of saving 
two other lives, or even one, though I question much if 
it would not have been at the expense of another life 
as yet unclaimed by the gibbet. 

Barring all these contingencies, and taking it for 
granted that I had passed in and out of the wood 
without detecting anything of those terrible occurrences, 
it might have fared ill with me in the subsequent phases 
of the affair, for there was a strict investigation made as 
to who was in that wood during that clay ; and beyond 



40 WAS IT A GHOST? 

a question, as I would not have attempted to conceal 
the fact of my presence, my friends of the police would 
have laid their justifiable hands upon me, and placed 
me in the black category of the suspected. In men- 
tioning this idea since to my friend the logician of 
judicial mystery, the tall chief of the force, he assured 
me that I would not have been interfered with, as I did 
not come in the least within the principles of his theory 
of the murder. But that did not exempt me, as I shall 
proceed to state. 



vn. 

SUSPECTED. 

Keeping in view the fact of the week's concealment, 
my reader will readily understand that I had no induce- 
ment to change my usual habits, so far as the woods 
were concerned, and I consequently kept up my visita- 
tions ; but as the heat was growing daily more severe, I 
did not stroll far from the house, but confined myself in 
the main to the wood that reaches from the brook to the 
westward road in our front. I avoided thus pretty 
much my former walks, which included all that space 
lying between the flat bridge and the old gray rocks it 
had been my intention to make a memorandum of. 
Now and then, when the heat of the day had subsided, 
I went as far down as the stream ; for exceedingly cool 
and pleasant was it there, and quiet, too, in the shady 
evenings. Sometimes I took my sketching apparatus, 
but oftener went without it ; but it seems that, however 
I might go, I was not to do so without creating a terrible 
suspicion. 

The search, prompted by public duty, or instigated 
by private curiosity, had apparently worn itself out, 
when, upon a sweet morning, some two weeks after the 
4* 41 



42 WAS IT A GHOST ? 

discovery of the bodies, I stepped out of the front door, 
and saw, sitting under a shady tree in the stable-yard, 
holding converse with my host's father, a member of 
the polician fraternity. Naturally enough, thought I, 
this vigilant is wandering round to see what he can pick 
up of stray hints and suggestions that may lead to the 
discovery of the criminal, and the obtaining of the large 
rewards that had been tendered by public and private 
liberality. I recognized the policeman at once, having 
often rode in the car on Tremont Street which he con- 
ducted. Circumstances then induced quite an acquaint- 
ance of great kindness between us. He had been left 
for dead after one of the great battles in the Chicka- 
hominy, slaughtered by four or five bullets of the 
Southern rifles, but picked up and cured, and fated in 
after days to have the high prerogative of being put 
upon my track as one of, if not the bloody villain of 
all, concerned in the killing of the Joyce children. 

I went over to where the two were chatting under 
the bee-laden lime-tree, and, after hand-shaking with 
the ex-dead soldier-policeman, I helped to keep up 
the conversation, which flowed naturally upon the 
subject of the universal curiosity. He smiled a very 
peculiar smile when he saw me coming to him, and the 
farmer smiled, too ; but that passed in my mind for 
nothing more than the fact of his meeting with an old 
friend. Ah ! little did I think, while I smoked my pipe 



WAS IT A GHOST? 43 

and gossiped so sociably with that placid friend of 
justice, that it was especially to find who the tall, dark 
stranger was, who, with a bowie-knife in hand, and 
great firing of his revolver, roved those haunted woods 
of Bussey. I did not know until he had shaken hands 
and gone away ; when the fanner told me that the 
policeman had come to inquire who it was that was 
liviug with the family, and what my habits were, and 
where I was on the day of the murders, etc. My 
coming out of the house had interrupted this diabolical 
inquisition, and, upon seeing me, they both had looked at 
each other and exchanged a knowing smile, which, 
interpreted into English, could be spelled out thus : 
w Oh, I know him ! n on the part of the policeman ; and 
w You're sold this time," on the part of the farmer. 
The fact was that a youth, with his head full of ghosts 
and shrieking children, had seen me in the vicinage 
woods before and after the murders, and, frightened at 
my pallette knife and my ball practice, had hastened to 
the station at Jamaica Plains .and made report of the 
terrible bandit and assassin. My friend of the police 
has often since laughed with me over the adventure, 
and I have almost grown to look upon myself as a 
gentleman of rather a forbidding and ferocious cut, and 
feel prepared to let myself out to some of my friends at 
the Studio Building as a model for any species of 
brigand, of Italy or Wall Street ; or, if it be not treason 



44 WAS IT A GHOST ? 

to say so, of State Street, Boston. There is something, 
after all, in being remarkable. However, it so hap- 
pened that in one way or another I became a satellite to 
the sanguinary meteor that had swept over those woods, 
and, had I allowed it, I would have grown into a morbid 
mass of melodramatic idiosyncrasy. But the worst had 
not come yet. 



VIII. 

THE MURDER-ROCK. 

In the meantime, the inquest had been convened, and 
their verdict of murder, with the words, " Done by some 
one unknown," blazoned to the world, and stating that 
twenty-eight stabs had been planted in the body of the 
girl, and also announcing a grievously erroneous theory 
of the deed. The wounds upon the girl were chiefly in 
the back, as if the first assault had been made while she 
was stooping over her work, her wreath, perhaps ; but 
afterward, as she despairingly confronted her assailant, 
the remaining stabs were given, while she could yet see 
the rapid lifting and falling of his arm. It is not an 
assured belief in the police theory of the deed, that she 
was killed upon the spot where she was discovered ; and 
what specific reasons they have on that point, I cannot 
readily get hold of, unless it be based upon the fact 
that, had she been attacked only a few paces from a 
frequented road, her cries would have exposed the 
culprit to the risk of detection, and of that he naturally 
would have considered ; and in that view the theory has 
some force, for it certainly was a better place in which 
to conceal the body dead, than attack it living. All 

45 



46 WAS IT A GHOST? 

around this spot, the trees, as I have previously de- 
scribed, grew densely, and a new visitor could easily 
lose his way, so that the deed may have been perpe- 
trated in the wood, and the corpse drawn to the 
concealing formation of the rocks, as they were away 
from the path, and not very likely to be visited. 
However near the truth may be the theory of the 
police, there was evidence discovered at the time the 
body was revealed of a struggle, and a violent one, at 
that very spot among the rocks. There was a sapling 
bent and broken at the westward end of the rock, and its 
breaking was recent, — not done by any strong current 
of air, for there had been none, and if there had been, 
no wind would break that pliant stem and leave the 
vulnerable trees untouched. Had nothing of impor- 
tance happened at this very spot, we would have to look 
for an explanation somewhere else, if we deemed it of 
importance. It evidently had been broken within a few 
days. Was it broken by some one who had visited the 
spot ere it was invaded by the two strangers on that 
Sunday when the body was discovered ? That is hardly 
possible, for if it had been so, the body would have 
been seen, and the fact disclosed at once of her murder. 
Was it broken in the struggle that ensued between the 
murderer and his victim? How could she break so 
tough a bough? Why should he? But at all events, 
there it was, some four feet from her body. I saw it, 



WAS IT A GHOST? 47 

and testify to its being there, and to the fracture being 
of recent date. It might have been broken by the 
man as he ascended from the road to the rock, for it 
stood where he might grasp it in his ascent ; but that 
could hardly be ; and there was no need to break it to 
give passage to her body if it was drawn from the spot 
where she fell, farther off. It was evidence of some- 
thing that had happened, but a testimony of nothing 
that could properly and naturally attach itself to the 
murder. Cattle could not have done it, for they never 
were permitted in these woods, though a lad, who 
guarded a drove down on the pasture lands below the 
hill, was examined upon the idea that a madman had 
committed the deed in his frenzy, and he happened to 
be not of the sound order of brains. He was exempted 
from further suspicion, as well he might be. 

The spot 'on which she lay was the convexity of an 
abrupt whale-backed rock, running some fifteen feet 
east and west, and guarding any object at its base from 
the sight of persons passing along the road. Crumbled 
flints abounded thereabout, and a hard and cruel bed it 
was for a sleeper, dead or alive. When I first visited 
it there were no marks of so terrific a scene as must 
have been enacted in her killing, save the doubtful 
sapling that lay broken and prostrate ; but above the 
spot where her piteous head had fallen, some pious 
visitor had placed a cross, with a card affixed, that 



48 WAS IT A GHOST? 

informed the public of the name of the poor sufferer, 
and a prayer in her behalf. 

One week after the discovery of the body of the boy, 
the thick coppice and bushes that had concealed him 
were stripped away as memorials of the incident, and 
the ground about trampled by more than a thousand 
people ; while the slimy mud oozed up as if eager to 
suck in more of the ghastly nutriment that had flown so 
freely in the first and final struggle of his death. 



IX. 



SUSPICION. 

As a matter of course, several arrests were made 
after the delivery of the verdict by the coroner, and 
rumor plied her busy trade with an increased variety of 
tones. Our rural neighborhood rose at once into the 
importance of a public spectacle ; and full-orbed 
curiosity roved the highways, questioning all kinds of 
people with all kinds of interrogatories. 

There is always a plentiful supply of ready-made mur- 
derers in almost every well and long-established settle- 
ment, — men who look cross and act cross; who come 
home at mysterious hours and in mysterious ways, with 
slouched hats and shabby shirt-collars ; who are not often 
if ever seen in church ; suspicious fellows ; just the sort of 
fellows to be talked about whenever anything bad has hap- 
pened ; but, perhaps, after all said and done, as good as 
their neighbors, indeed, sometimes better than the gos- 
sips who prate so lavishly about them. But they serve 
a purpose ; and to that purpose some of them were put 
at once ; and they bore it, and will have to bear it again. 
It is pretty much a matter of clothing. One day the 
whole thing was out, — the murderer was known. A 
5 49 



50 WAS IT A GHOST? 

neighbor's farm-hand had fallen in with another neigh- 
bor's farm-hand, steering his ox-cart upon some errand 
of slothful industry, and from the ox-driver he had 
learned that the said driver, on the noon of the murder- 
clay, had met the boy and girl (boy and girl described) 
on the road between Mr. Motley's house on the hill and 
the blood-stained rock, and soon afterward he was 
overtaken by, or he met, a swarthy man with a black 
mustache, heated and in haste, pursuing the same line 
of travel on which he had met the children. Yes, he 
could identify that man. He looked eager and fierce, 
with his dark skin and twisted moustache ; and those 
were the real children, and he their murderer. He had 
seen the lambs, and he had looked upon the wolf. This 
story bore the semblance of possibility ; and we were 
all prepared to hear of an arrest and identification. By 
night, however, the narrative had undergone some mod- 
ification, but not losing in the vigor and picturesqueness 
of the original drawing, — rather otherwise. I immedi- 
ately sought out the author of the bulletin, intending, 
if there was any substance in it after thorough investi- 
gation, to report the facts without delay to the proper 
authority. 

True, the clodpoll had seen two children on that 
road ; but it turned out, on cross-examination, that he 
saw them on the day after the murder ; but the portrait 
of the eager and mysterious swarth, with his curled 



WAS IT A GHOST ? 51 

mustache, had been inserted by the more imaginative 
brain of the man who repeated the intelligence. So all 
that card-castle of discovery fell to pieces. Then, again, 
a gallant and bullet-maimed officer was put under the ban ; 
and wonderful items grew into robust legends, that would 
have delighted the immortal Sylvanus Cobb, Senior. 
The bloody tunic of the man of Mars had been washed 
by the terror-stricken nymph of soap-suds, and she was, 
inasmuch as she had " talked " of that red evidence, 
forthwith discharged from the wash-tub of the family. 
This belief in the guilt of the maimed officer took such 
emphasis of accusation as to enforce from his friends 
a proof that he was, on the day of the murder, far away 
in a Virginia city, engaged, among other things, in 
writing his name in a lacty's album. One evening, after 
the Sunday's discovery, — it might have been ten days, — 
as I was riding up the hill that led to Mr. Motley's man- 
sion gateway, and when I had reached the summit, I 
came upon a young man standing a little off the main 
road. He stood there but a moment ; but in that mo- 
ment I saw that his eyes swept in that section of his 
view which embraced the accursed trees of Bussey's 
blood-dyed hill, but with no look of white affright 
in them; and then, with his one arm swinging, — the 
other maimed in some battle-field of the South, —he went 
onward to the gate. That was the officer who had with 
one arm committed those dual murders, even while he 



52 WAS IT A GHOST ? 

wrote his name in the album of a lady in the old city 

down in the Southern country. 

From such things does the monster Gossip make up 

a verdict, driving in shame the innocent to a defence, 

while giving to the one of guilt the benefit of an ar- 
cs o o 

rested search, or a postponed accusation. Driven from 
this stronghold of suspicion, away went greedy Accusa- 
tion down among the shanties of the Irish workmen, 
along the line of the railroad ; but nothing there was 
brought to light beyond the existence of pigs, poverty, 
and all the other poetries of Hibernian habitations. 

In the midst of this confusion of assertion and contra- 
diction, of hope and disappointment, a luckless house- 
painter, of a religions turn of mind, and a taste perhaps 
of fluidical enjoyment, fell into the hands of the inquisi- 
tors, and, at the time, it must be confessed, with some 
circumstances attendant on his movements and position 
that gave color to the theory of his criminality. At his 
house the boy and girl had boarded last ; from his house 
they started on their terrible adventure ; and it was 
said that he was engaged on that day to do some work 
at or about May's wood ; and so they linked him with 
the two pools of blood out in the shades of the fearful 
woods. There was a judicial examination ; but naught 
came out of it to warrant his detention, and so he was sent 
about his business rejoicing, with a clear skirt, and a 
eulogistic letter from the clergyman of his parish. The 



WAS IT A GHOST ? 53 

incident seemed rather to have worked to the advantage 
of the window-sash artist ; and, in the full enjoyment of 
his acquittal, and the continued performance of his grave 
religious duties, this history must leave him. • 

And yet another. A young fellow was arrested, and 
lodged in the county jail at Dedham, of whom there 
was not the slightest doubt of his being the man. 
When arrested, it was proved that he had been absent 
from work on the fatal day ; that his hands were 
scratched, and his clothes spotted with blood ; and that 
he had been drunk on that night, driven, it was relig- 
iously and philosophically construed, into that beastly 
condition by the reproaches of his conscience. Ah, he 
was the very man ! He looked, in his dimness of drunk 
and tatterdemalionism of garb, like a real Simon-pure 
unadulterated murderer. The rope was ready, and the 
coming carpenter dreamed of a gallows on which he 
was to swing. But the rope had not yet been twisted, 
and the carpenter had only dreamed ; for it was estab- 
lished as follows of his biography : He had been absent 
from work because he had no work to attend to ; he had 
been drunk because he loved bad whiskey and good 
company; he was scratched and blood-tinted because 
his valor and his bottle had led him, at an ill-reputed 
tavern, some two or three miles up the road, to attempt 
the vindication or assertion of his philosophic, philan- 
thropic, political, or religious opinions and dogmas, by 



54 WAS IT A GHOST? 

quotations from the library of his fists and muscles. 
So he, too, got out of the clutches of the law, and stands, 
or staggers, now, ready at any moment to be arrested 
upon the same grounds for any similar offence, or other 
offence, that his neighbors may think him fit for. 

There was one other case of suspicion, but no arrest; 
and as it illustrates the uncertainty of circumstantial 
evidence somewhat, and is a little singular, I will relate 
it. A young fellow of variegated habits worked in a 
large rifle establishment near one of the city limits, dis- 
tant from the scene of the murders some four or five 
miles. One of his habits was to rove into the suburbs, 
seeking his recreation according to his fancy. This 
fact was a strong circumstance against him ; for at 
that time the theory of the twofold character of the 
crime had not been relinquished. Up to the period of 
the murders, this youth was the life of the establish- 
ment where he was employed, full of tricks, and jokes, 
and happy, ceaseless good-humor. On the morning of 
the 12th of June, he was absent at roll-call ; but at 
one o'clock in the afternoon he ivas there and answered 
to his name. Whatever had happened, a great change 
had come over him. He was no more the jubilant and 
frolicsome madcap of the day before, but sullen to mo- 
roseness, and his face was strongly sunburnt, and alto- 
gether his w^hole appearance and behavior indicated a 
transformation as singular as it was sudden. When 



WAS IT A GHOST? 55 

questioned, he admitted that he had been in the woods 
somewhere, but would speak no more upon the subject. 
In search of any, the slightest clue to the discovery of 
the urystery, the police soon came into the possession 
of these facts, and suspicion fell darkly around him. 
Upon farther inquiry, it appeared that he had converted 
two files into poniards, — one he had given to a friend, 
the other he had kept. The day afterward, while the 
police were making these investigations, and keeping 
him, as they thought, unconscious of the fact, he disap- 
peared, and has not been heard of from that clay to this. 
One of the dirks when applied to the wounds fitted ex- 
actly. I have seen the one he had given to his com- 
rade, now in the desk of the chief. A long, ugly 
weapon it is, sharp at the point, and double-edged, 
equal to a bowie-knife ere yet it has arrived at the point 
of complete perfection of destruction. 

But he was not the man. Why he fled we may con- 
jecture. Doubtless he had heard of the advance of the 
authorities upon his steps, and feeling that appearances 
were against him on the first blush of the investigation, 
and not being logically disposed to examine into the 
importance of minutes and hours wherein lay his abso- 
lute defence, he fled affrighted at his dangerous position. 
He was innocent, because he answered his name at one 
o'clock. Had he done those murders he never could 
have reached his workshop at that hour unless he had 



56 WAS IT A GHOST? 

hired the magic of a necromancer, or been mounted on 
the fleetest horse that ever won a race ; for the murders 
were accomplished soon after one o'clock. Had he not 
answered to his name at the hour mentioned, he would 
have been arrested, though still he would not have been 
guilty. It was another man who did those deeds. 



X. 

WAS IT A GHOST? 

And after that a heavy silence fell over the mysteri- 
ous murders of the Joyce children. The officers of 
justice, to whom I spoke during that time, looked wise 
and watchful, and held to the belief that the malefactor 
would yet be found. 

I come now to a portion of my story that I assure my 
reader is, in every respect, true. I know that only one- 
eighth, or even a lesser moiety of the world, will give 
me credence ; not that they will directly question my 
plighted word, but they will question the philosophy of 
which my experience is a phase ; but who knows but 
that it may be an actual substantiation? So assured 
was I that no deception was practised upon me, that it 
was only the other day that I made a statement of it to 
Mr. Kurtz, the chief of police, to whom I had occasion 
to speak of my design to write a narrative of my knowl- 
edge and experience in relation to the unhappy incidents 
of the murder, putting it to his discretion whether I 
should go on and give my writing to the public. I had 
some misgiving as to the propriety of saying anything 
of such importance while it remained in its present 

57 



58 WAS IT A GHOST? 

apparent quiescence ; and though it is not essential to 
my purpose to repeat our conversation, I feel at liberty 
to say that he favored my design most cordially. But 
with regard to my revelation to him of what I shall soon 
put my reader in possession of, he did not evince that 
unpleasant scepticism which so often borders upon the 
insolent, and listened to my narration with the evidences 
of a respect that at least bore the semblance of belief. 
I must confess, however, that he somewhat startled me 
when, at the conclusion of my recital, he put to me this 
practical question : " Do you think you could recognize 
the man 9 " That question, the reader will perceive 
anon, was somewhat of a staggerer; but I rallied under 
the belief that the head dealer in the positive had not 
quite grasped the peculiar significance of my revelation, 
and since then I have seen something — a something 
which he has in his desk, and which may appear here- 
after — that would, if I deem it necessary to test my 
idea, perhaps enable me to say to him, "I can." 

It was quite three weeks after the blood of the unhappy 
Joyce children had been mixed with the leaves and 
oozings of that mysterious wood, — when everything 
was falling back, in our country side, to the old order of 
simple occurrences, — that, upon a still and clear night, 
I went out of the cottage where I still lived, and, taking 
the two dogs with me, strolled down through the stable- 
yard, and past the garden, until I came to the brow of 



WAS IT A GHOST? 59 

the hill that formed the apex of my friend's grass-lands. 
The brow of the hill was flat all about me, commencing 
its declension some hundred and fifty feet eastwardly 
from where I stopped, and at the base running off into 
a meadow, the opposite side of which was overlooked 
by the Bussey wood ; and, from where I stood, several 
pines rose out of the even surface of the forest, marking, 
as with an uplifted hand spread out, the place where the 
murder of the girl had been done. I have to be par- 
ticular in my description seemingly to tediousness, but 
the singularity of what transpired leaves me no choice ; 
for better, on such a matter, not to speak at all than 
not to speak explicitly. I resume. The grass was 
short on the brow of the hill, not over a few inches in 
length, improving in quality as the descent reached the 
valley. There was a tree near me ; but that I left be- 
hind, putting it in my rear some ten paces, when I 
stopped. On my left was Motley's wood, — so often 
mentioned, — drawing up with its intense shadows, close 
to the dividing wall. From the wall to where I stood 
all was clear and distinct, save where the shadows, or, 
more properly speaking, the shade fell over the ground, 
though in that shade there was a secondary light which 
artists and all thorough students of nature will recognize. 
The wall and the wood on my left ran down to that 
corner at the creek, which was only a short distance, 
about fifty feet, from the spot where the boy had fallen. 



60 WAS IT A GHOST? 

Some two hundred and fifty yards away, and close to 
the corner just mentioned, was a clump of trees, and 
then straight before me, without an intervening object, 
the dark wood and the hand -like pines, that gloomed, in 
deeper gloom than night itself imparts, with all her 
shadows, over the gory rock of the girl's death-bed. 
My purpose was simply to take the cooler air from the 
winnowing trees ; for the room where I had been sitting 
with the family was oppressive with lamp-light and 
the encased atmosphere. I had become so accustomed 
to the dread localities, that habit had destroyed, with the 
first surprise and horror, all the keen sensations of a 
mysterious and indescribable neighborhoodism to the 
scene. Indeed, I had begun to look upon the whole 
affair as a story that had been told to me by some such 
person as the "Ancient Mariner." Had it been other- 
wise, I never could have been induced to stay another 
moment in that house. I beg to assure everybody that 
when, at that hour of half-past eight o'clock, I left the 
parlor to stroll to the brow of the meadow hill, I did 
not have one thought in my head that connected itself 
with the murders. Other affairs had turned up, in 
which I was personally interested, and my mind, though 
not dwelling upon them at the moment, felt, if it felt 
anything at all, the reverberations of mental discussions 
upon the topics I have just spoken of as of personal 
interest. I think now, remembering everything, that 



WAS IT A GHOST? 61 

if I had any peculiar sensation, it was not superior to 
that of the two dogs who kept close to my heels, — for I 
was there to enjoy the sensuous and physical boon of 
air; they, indeed, governed by a higher motive, the 
society of man. I was, consequently, if I may say so 
with perfect self-respect, in a complete condition of 
animal existence, and not prepared for or expecting any- 
thing beyond the ordinary condition of animal and 
vegetable life. I was, in fine, nearly upon a level with 
the inanimate existences around and about me. I am 
unwillingly compelled to remind the reader that it was 
the habit of my host, who did business in the city, of 
leaving the train at Laurel Hill Station, at nine o'clock, 
as a general thing, and keeping the main road until he 
got to the bottom of the hill near to where the brook, 
so often mentioned, crosses the road, entered the low- 
lands at the outskirts of Bussey's wood, and thence 
following the path which led by the boy's murder-place,' 
and up the hill-side covered by the Motley wood, keep- 
ing close to the wall until he reached that point of the 
wall near which I was standing, passed over it, and was 
home. It must also be borne in mind that the two 
dogs loved their master with a steadfast affection ; in the 
case of the serene Jack it was a very jump-about, caper- 
ing, stump-tail, demonstrative love. Whenever they 
saw him in the distance nearing home, or knew by 
instinct that he was approaching, though for the moment 

G r~ 



62 WAS IT A GHOST? 

hidden by the intervening trees or rocks, they would 
break away from my minor and only temporary bonds, 
and rush to meet him exultingly, and then ensued a 
scene of wild confusion and barbaric dosr-tamins:. 
These two facts remembered, I will advance with my 
narrative. 

Knowing that my host was irregular as to his hours of 
return home at night, — sometimes arriving by another 
than the nine-o'clock train, — I was not surprised when 
I saw a figure lean over the wall for an instant with- 
in about twenty feet of me, pause a moment, and then 
cross over to the side on which I was. Seeing that he 
stopped, I spoke aloud these words, and none other, 
thinking of none other: "Hallo, Dan, is that you?" — 
for, though I could discover the figure and recognize its 
movements, there was too great a shade thrown over the 
wall to enable me to distinguish even the lineaments of 
a face so familiar to me as were those of my friend. 
To my appeal there was no reply, and then in an instant 
the impression came upon me that if it really was 
my friend, he was making an essay upon my nerves. 
So up to this moment I never had a thought apart from 
him. I did not notice the conduct of the dogs, or even 
think of them, for if I had done so, I never ivould have 
inquired if it was "Dan;" for they would have been 
away from me at the first footfall after he had passed 
the vicinity of the low bridge down in the hollow of the 



WAS IT A GHOST? 63 

hill ; or, having not done that, they would have been at 
the wall the moment his face looked over it. Nor did I 
observe that they kept unusually close to me. I did 
not even think that, if it was not him, it was extraordi- 
nary that the dogs did not, without more ado, make their 
assault ; for as a vigilance committee they were extremely 
zealous in the discharge of their duty, and woe betide the 
trespasser upon those limits after dark if they once got 
scent of him ! That sedate and usually almost apathetic 
Jack was equal to a cherubim with a flaming sword; 
and as to Jack the fighter, his mind was strictly judicial 
with regard to trespass. It was not till afterward, when 
the climax of this abrupt and singular apparition was 
reached, that my attention was directed to the behavior 
of my two companions. While I stood perfectly mo- 
tionless, waiting for some recognition of my appeal, the 
figure advanced slowly in a direct line from the wall, 
leaving the shadow, and stopped before me, and not 
twenty feet away from me. I saw at once that it was 
somebody I had never seen before. When in the light, 
without even a weed to obstruct my vision, as soon as he 
stopped, I called again : " Speak, or I will fire ! " I am 
not naturally of a blood-letting disposition, but some- 
how or other that threat came from me without any 
power or will of my mind to arrest it. It was an un- 
meaning and perhaps a cowardly speech, for he was 
alone, while I was armed with two powerful dogs, either 



64 WAS IT A GHOST? 

one of whom would have vanquished him, had I but said 
the word. Nor had I a pistol to carry out, had I 
been so rash as to intend it, my foolish demonstration. 
It was at this period I observed especially the behavior 
of the dogs. Up to this time they had been quiescent, 
lying upon the grass in the full enjoyment of its fresh- 
ness ; but now they both got up, and I felt on each side 
of me the pressure of their bodies. They were evi- 
dently frightened, and, by the casual glance I gave them, 
induced to do so by the sensation of their touch, I saw 
that they were looking with every symptom of terror at 
the figure that stood so near us without a motion. And 
the figure. It never once turned its head directly tow- 
ard me, but seemed to fix its look eastward over where 
the pine-trees broke the clear horizon on the murder- 
hill. This inert pose was preserved but for a moment ; 
for, as quick as the flash of gunpowder, it wheeled as upon 
a pivot, and, making one movement, as of a man com- 
mencing to step out toward the wall, was gone ! To my 
vision it never crossed the space between where it had 
stood and the outline of the shade thrown by the trees 
upon the ground. One step after ' turning was all I 
saw, and then it vanished. Can I describe this figure 
you will ask ; and my reply is that I can, but not exactly 
in such a way as to satisfy the chief's business-like in- 
terrogatory. Before I go any farther, I must say that, 
as I had nothing to clo in getting up this apparition, I 



WAS IT A GHOST? 65 

do not see how any one can poke fun at me simply be- 
cause I was there to see it. A man sees a star fall ; he 
has no agency in the eccentric transaction, and is he to 
be ridiculed because there happens to be a tack loose 
in the celestial carpet whose dropping out he witnesses 
and tells of, and happens not to be astronomer enough 
to explain ? Here was a moral and physical tack loose 
somewhere and somehow, and I had struck my vision 
on its point. What I saw I relate exactly as it hap- 
pened, and nothing more, though I may be induced to 
meet the usual objections to the possibility of its occur- 
rence, in a later portion of this narrative. I could, if I 
felt so inclined, stop my recital and talk by the folio 
about this affair ; but it was a very different matter at 
the moment when that something, which would not reply 
to me, stood in the night light, clear and distinct as a 
marble statue, and cast one glance over toward the hill 
that held among its gray rocks a stain that would last 
there forever. But I half promised to describe this 
figure, this appearance, this apparition, and a few words 
will answer. It looked like painted air to begin with. 
An artist, sitting by my side and following my ideas, 
might render it to the life or death ; but he would have 
to blend his matter-of-fact pencil with the vague vehicles 
of spiritualistic imagination. In the first place, there was 
no elaborate toilet ; indeed I could not make out the 
fashion of the garment, taking it for granted that it was 
6* 



66 WAS IT A GHOST? 

draped in the usual costume, being too absorbed by the 
complex and somewhat agitated train of thought which, 
commencing with the assumption that it was my friend, 
and which was suddenly relinquished, leaving me exposed 
to the rapid transitions of intellectual deductions so sin- 
gularly called into action and so totally at variance with 
my habitual mental or nervous equanimity. I felt as 
a drowning man might feel who, admitting the fact that 
the water has got the master of him, lets that primary 
incident take care of itself, and looks only to some ob- 
ject by w T hose aid he may relieve himself from the des- 
perate catastrophe. I was occupied more in the effort 
to recognize a human being in the figure that was before 
me than in making a tailor's analysis of his apparel. 
One thing was evident, — he looked dark-gray from head 
to foot. Body he had, and legs, and arms, and a head ; 
but the face I could not distinctly see, as he turned it 
from me ; but there was an outline such as can be traced 
in shadows thrown by a dim lamp upon a rough-plas- 
tered wall, — and that is all I can say about it. 01 
course it is unsatisfactory, but I had no means or time 
for a fuller diagnosis. 



XI. 

THE TESTS. 

The effect left upon me when I found myself alone 
was not exactly that of alarm, but rather a determina- 
tion to test, if it might be possible, this appearance or 
delusion, or whatever it might be ; and, instantly turning 
from the spot, I walked back to the house. The pres- 
ence of persons in the room, the light, the furniture it- 
self, had an influence to calm whatever of perturbation 
I was sensible of from the strange interview through 
which I had so rapidly passed. I debated now in my 
mind with regard to the test I should apply. Was it a 
ghost? That was in part the question, but not the entire 
inquiry; for I could not come all at once to the con- 
clusion that it was an undoubted visitant from the dead 
man's realm. While pondering over these doubts, an 
adventure of my youth came vividly back to my recol- 
lection, and seemed to offer itself as a means by which I 
should judge of my present experience ; and, thinking it 
may amuse my reader, I see no reason why I should 
not add it to my narrative. 

A goodly number of years ago, I was a student at a 
college in the State of Maryland, not far from the town 

67 



68 WAS IT A GHOST ? 

of Gettysburg. From the plateau of the mountain, at 
the base of which the college was situated, I have been 
told, the smoke as it actually poured from the guns, not 
after it floated miles away, was seen during the progress 
of the great and inexplicable battle that has made the 
town one of historic importance. 

Upon a certain occasion, it being a holiday, I went 

over to the neighboring village of , intending to 

have a free-and-easy time with smuggled cigars, — smok- 
ing being a virtue unrecognized by the dignitaries of 
the college, and forbidden under heavy pains and pen- 
alties w r ithin the sacred and unfumigated precincts. I 
had other objects, perhaps, justifiable to youth, and un- 
necessary to dilate upon now. At all events, I was 
away from college, and away I remained until the ad- 
vancing evening warned me that I had somewhat of a 
walk before I could get back. There were two ways 
by which I could return, — one by the common county 
road, and a shorter but more difficult route by a nar- 
row path leading partially over and along the mountain 
ridge. I chose the latter. So I bade adieu to the vil- 
lage and its barber, who was our contraband chief in 
the cigar smuggle, and at whose house I had enjoyed a 
comfortable but un collegiate dinner, and with whose 
pretty daughter ( all girls are pretty to college boys ) I 
had taken a precious lesson in flirtation, almost engag- 
ing myself to marry her after I had graduated and seen 



WAS IT A GHOST? 69 

my way clearly to parental acquiescence. Poor bar- 
ber's daughter ! I wonder how many other lads made 
innocent love to her and vaguely hinted similar magnifi- 
cent proposals? But away I went up the mountain, un- 
der the trees, in and out with the path, by the rocks, by 
the torrent, and ere I had advanced a mile, the moon 
( did you ever see a Middle States' moon ? ) had stolen 
into the skies. The wind rose gently with the moon, as 
if it would make soft music for her, and the clouds ac- 
companied her in muslin toilets ; and so with the moon 
and the wind and the misty clouds I pursued my walk, 
smoking the last cigar of that blissful holiday. 

My path led by the church, belonging to the college, 
half way up the mountain, and afterward by the old 
graveyard, walled in, — a crumbling and a neglected 
wall, over which you could step easily into the silent 
city. Arrived at this graveyard, I stopped and looked 
down upon the college. The lights were gleaming 
there ; and, upon the fatal theory that a pleasure enjoyed 
under bah is sweeter than pleasure permitted, I re- 
solved to finish my cigar before I made the final descent. 
But where could I smoke so near the college and be free 
from detection ? Lingering on the path I might be de- 
tected and reported, and that would be fatal. In the 
graveyard ? Who ever ventured there except the dead 
and the mourners, or a law-breaker? The very place I 
thought ; and so I crossed over the shattered wall, and, 



70 WAS IT A GHOST; 

selecting an entablature that was a sort of mortuary din- 
ing table supported by four brick legs, I stretched my- 
self and fell into that luxurious enjoyment which only 
a true smoker can realize, — and of that class I was then, 
and am now. 

The moon, by this time, was nearly above me, and so 
bright that a woman could have threaded her needle by 
its wonderful effulgence. I had not been many seconds 
on the table-like slab, before I heard a sound that some- 
what startled me ; but, after a moment's reflection, I 
concluded it was the wind moaning round the old church 
that was at the upper end of the cemetery. Quieting 
myself with this belief, I pulled away at my cigar, now 
nearly at its last gasp, when I heard a repetition of the 
sound ; but this time it seemed to proceed directly from 
underneath the slab ! The affair was getting peculiar, 
and my nervous system was undergoing that singular 
process so well expressed by the phrase goose-fleshy ; for 
if the sound did come from under the slab it could not 
be the wind, for it was not like anything the wind could 
do with such materials. But while I debated the ques- 
tion, the utterance struck upon my ear again, and this 
time it was an unmistakable groan, as if human or in- 
human lips had given it expression. The goose-flesh 
arrangement continued to develop itself, but not to such 
an enormous wrinkle as to prevent my peeping over the 
side of the stone to see if I could catch a sight of the 



WAS IT A GHOST? 71 

groan or the groaner. I feel convinced, though I did 
not test it, that the extraordinary phenomena so often 
alluded to by novelists did occur, and that my hair did 
stand on end, when I saw directly under me, out in the 
moonlight, a battered, withered leg covered by a dingy, 
mould-soiled piece of cloth, with a boot attached, but 
such a boot that no human ingenuity of St. Crispinism 
could repair. The boot looked like the skeleton of a 
boot, as the pantaloons looked like a skeleton of panta- 
loons. They were to all intent and purposes super- 
natural fractures. While I looked, the groaning was 
repeated, and simultaneously another leg, another piece 
of mould-stained cloth, another tattered boot was thrown 
out of the deep shadow and softly placed crosswise 
over the other, following the example of knight-er- 
rantry sculpture. I had stretched myself, supported 
by my hands, to the edge. of the slab, and could see 
distinctly these movements and appearances ; and my 
mind was so completely divided between the physical 
results and the naturally suggestive idea of the super- 
natural, as to leave me in a medium state of amused 
courage and inherent superstition. 

But it was necessary for me to act, and so, without 
further hesitation, I supported my body on my arms 
reversed, and made a long leg of it, stretching myself 
entirely free, of course, from a contact with the mouldy- 
looking arrangement that protruded into the moonlight. 



72 WAS IT A GHOST? 

Having established my position at a proper distance of 
observation, I at first hesitated whether to go away or 
not, — a vague and not unnatural fear suggesting the idea 
of flight ; a positive but artificial conviction determining 
me to remain and see the matter out. One of the great- 
est and best lessons, and for which there should be a 
professorship established in every college in the country, 
is the lesson of self-command. Make it at the com- 
mencement of your life a speciality, and it will serve 
you in after years as a guardian of your honor, and 
sometimes of your life itself. It makes you well be- 
haved, careful of the feelings of others, tolerant and 
independent, and is the safeguard of a woman's virtue 
and the potent spear by which truth may be distinguished 
from error. By a strong effort I reached the point of 
self-command, and so my legs were as firmly fixed to 
the spot, as those limbs of. mystery peeping out from 
the entablature of the tomb. My next act was to catch 
hold of the feet and pull at them, — pull the whole affair 
into the light and determine what it was. When I had 
drawn this moaning body forth, I lifted it by a vigorous 
effort, and stood it against the tomb. The head fell 
backward and the moon shone full upon the face. The 
face was swollen with a livid kind of pufiiness, and the 
eyes closed fast. I placed my hand upon the forehead 
and felt the moisture, clammy and revolting. The 
hands fell heavily by the sides, and a tremor ran over 



WAS IT A GHOST? 73 

and shook the figure as if with palsy, and groans and 
moans came quick, and as they came I shook the thing 
by its shoulders ; but there was no awakening as yet of 
the closed orbs and apparently dead brain. I worried 
myself no longer, but drew the loathsome figure away 
from the grave-stone and commenced an advance toward 
the broken wall. It moved heavily, but at last we 
reached the boundary, and with difficulty got over it. 
The mass was passive ; I was very positive. I went 
clown the mountain, passed the college, and, reaching a 
cottage, I rapped upon the door. A woman opened it, 
and, giving my ghost a push, he staggered or fell into 
her arms, or upon the floor, I know not which, and this 
dingy spectre was no more nor less than the hard-drink- 
ing husband of one of the college outside servants. 
Here, then, was the test case which came back to me, 
with all its vivid incidents and extraordinary sugges- 
tions, to help me out of my present dilemma? In the 
adventure of my youth there was at first a large supply 
of the ghostly element, and, had I fled the investigation, 
' perhaps nothing would have disabused my mind of its 
supernatural character. The man would in all proba- 
bility have been left until early morning in undisturbed 
possession of his unique apartment, and, when restored 
to his senses, would have been the very last to initiate 
a revelation. It would have been a confession fraught 
with serious consequences, — in the first place with regard 

7 



74 WAS IT A GHOST? 

to his situation under the college, — and it would not have 
contributed largely to his domestic felicity. To peach 
on me would have been to implicate himself, and, as 
drunkenness is morally a worse crime than the smoking 
of a cigar, he would have been the first to have suffered 
decapitation. It was my self-possession alone that 
turned one of the most reliable ghost incidents into a 
tale of beastly absurdity. If I was so near seeing a 
ghost's legs on that night, which turned out to be no 
ghost's legs at all, why might there not be some chance 
of my visitor on the brow of the hill to-night turning out 
to be some vagrant more wildly drunk than the drunken 
college-phantom ? . 



xn. 

TESTS. 

I again left the house, having tarried there not over 
ten minutes, resolved to revisit the locality where the 
puzzle had presented itself. After calling the dogs, — for 
I wished them to be with me to make the test complete, 
and also to observe their conduct, — I searched in every 
likely place to find out if my friend had not returned ; 
for I still had a vague suspicion running in my head, 
that after all he might possibly have succeeded in some 
unaccountable way, in enveloping me in the maze of a 
ghostly manifestation. But I searched for him in vain ; 
and, to settle all doubt relative to his agency in the 
atfair, I will state that he did not return home that night 
until ten o'clock or after, driving by the road leading 
through Jamaica Plain. 

I then went clown the garden road, and stood upon 
the very spot I had previously occupied. As I said be- 
fore, I wished to see how the dogs would act should the 
figure make its appearance ; and even before I reached 
my former position I was struck by the reluctant man- 
ner in which they followed me, — but I managed to get 
them on, and so there we three were ; but where was 

that eccentric fourth ? 

75 



76 WAS IT A GHOST? 

He was riot there. Some people will say I had been 
controlled by the solemn influences of the night and the 
ghastly associations blended with the scene and all its 
gloomy neighborhood, and consequently was in a ver}' 
lit condition to receive a demonstration and accept it 
as supernatural ; but I will at all times maintain that 
when I first went down that garden walk that night, and 
saw the form that I took to be that of my friend, I was, 
as I have previously most minutely and accurately ex- 
plained, not in that spiritualistic, sympathetic condition. 
But on the second visit I confess that I was in a better 
temperament to receive the influences of night and scene 
and associations, and to which yon may add the incident 
which gives such a weird aspect to my narrative. In 
the first, my condition was natural and eminently 
composed, and yet I had the vision ; in the second, with 
all my nerves stretched in expectancy, I saw nothing. 
Now, how was that ? I stood still as a living man can 
stand, and fixed my eyes upon the wall where the fig- 
ure had first appeared ; but all was moveless and silent. 
The old wall and the shadows looked as they did before. 
I turned quick as thought, and tried to surprise any faint 
glimpse of anything that might have come to the spot 
where the apparition had stopped in the interval of my 
withdrawn attention ; but there was nothing but the 
short grass backed by the dark wood where the deeds 
of blood had been perpetrated. I even looked to see 



WAS IT A GHOST ? 77 

if anything was lying down to avoid my scrutiny, 
walked over to the spot, and then in a straight line to 
the wall, supposing it was possible I might find some 
trace of a presence. I found nothing. 

I was therefore satisfied as far as this test was carried ; 
but still I was not content. A strange desire, which I 
possibly did not attempt to check, had taken possession 
of me to carry my investigation farther ; but it was a 
wild, and, all things considered, a fearful experiment ; at 
least I so viewed it when it was first suggested to my 
mind. It must be understood that I only submitted 
even to the contemplation of this ultimate and extraor- 
dinary test after I had determined that what I had 
seen was not a visual delusion or in facta human being. 
A sense of profound conviction seized me and impelled 
me to admit that something had occurred to my expe- 
rience beyond my ability to reconcile by the ordinary 
rules of explanation. In fine, I for the first time dur- 
ing the progress of these transactions suddenly con- 
nected the mystery with the murders. I had given 
common sense and resolute examination a fair chance 
to account for that abrupt whirl, that sudden vanishing, 
that terror of the dogs, their failure to recognize their 
master, or to attack the stranger, — either of which they 
would have done under ordinary circumstances, — and 
now I had no power to resist the conclusion that was so 
powerfully forced upon me. I pretend to no peculiar 



78 WAS IT A GHOST? 

bravery, though not entirely destitute of that quality, 
shared with inan by the rat-terrier and the rat himself, 
having enough of it for all the needs and purposes of a 
very good-natured and non-aggressive man ; and the 
chief feature of my courage is, my not having a fear of 
myself; that is, I am not backward in entertaining 
myself with proposals to undertake matters which, to 
some other men, of abler judgment, might appear a little 
too venturesome ; and here I was about to attempt a task 
that possibly only an animal should engage in, knowing 
nothing of human mysteries, or a pauper, for a reward; 
and even the pauper I think would have debated longer 
than I did whether he would not rather steal the recom- 
pense, or starve a little longer. It was no less a thing 
than to visit the spot off in those gloomy woods where 
the body of the girl was found lying among the rocks. 

This fancy was of a twofold character. One was, 
that since I was in for testing, I would go over there 
and test my nerves ; the other was an idea that, since I 
had been launched into the regions of the marvellous, 
possibly it might be made manifest to me there in 
those deep seclusions, on that spot, — a revelation that 
would lift the veil of mystery that enshrouded the fate 
of the two unfortunates, and also unravel the difficult 
maze in which # I had been involved. Perhaps I would 
see that figure there, — that figure a parent, or relative 
of the girl, who had come to me that night, impressing 



WAS IT A GHOST? 79 

me to the interview. I could not but think of the 
spiritualistic theory of the sympathies between the 
living and the dead, — the theory indeed of all Christian, 
and, for that matter, of all heathen sects, and there, and 
nowhere else, I might have revealed to me the name 
of the man who had done those hideous acts. Surely, 
I was in a singular predicament. I had either seen a 
ghost, or I had not, and I felt unwilling to let things 
remain in the condition of unsettled doubt, not caring 
for the rest of my life to be the prosy relator of a ghost 
story, which my listener could accuse me of having left 
unsettled and unfinished for the want of nerve to 
examine to its climax. Determined upon putting my 
duplex test into execution, I returned to the house to 
inform my friends that I was going out for a stroll, — 
not an unusual thing with me, — and to make some little 
arrangement that I thought personally needful in case 
of untoward accidents ; for, independent of the peculiar 
intention I was about to fulfil, there were reasons why 
I should not go unprepared for physical contingencies. 

The whole country, it will be remembered, was in a 
very disorganized state, — many people thrown out of 
employment, and others returned from scenes of strife 
and bloodshed, with an education, habituated to deeds 
of violence. So I armed myself with a companion 
charged to the lips with a counteracting but defensive 
species of explosive violence, — a thing that could speak 



80 WAS IT A GHOST? 

seven times, and always with effect if the delivery 
was good. 

On the theory of testing my nerves, in connection 
with the ghost theory, I at once resolved to dispense 
with the dogs, for their presence would have been 
companionship and a reliance apart from my individual- 
ity. My pistol was not taken for the ghosts, but for 
ghost-makers. Now that I reflect upon it all in my 
cooler moments, I must frankly admit that, after what 
had happened, this trip had something of the fearful 
in it, which my placid reader will not have the heart 
to deny, and nothing would induce me to repeat it, 
unless there were motives of a higher grade than those 
which ruled me then. It was, in fact, an enterprise 
totally at variance with common sense and common 
personal convenience and comfort. It was now about 
nine o'clock. No change had occurred in the shape 
of the night, — that is, no clouds had culminated in the 
skies, and yet no moon had been conjured up by 
astronomy, or by lovers' incantations. It was a lonely 
walk down the hill, over the very spot where my 
silent visitor had so lately stood to look at these very 
woods, — that very spoj to which my steps were now 
directed. Darker it was down in the valley, with the 
hill to my back and the great mass of foliage appar- 
ently near enough for me to touch ; but on I went, 
giving no time for reconsideration, on to the fence 



WAS IT A GHOST? * 81 

which I crossed, and then I was one of the black things 
in the intense gloom of the forest. 

Not a sound but the crackling of dead branches 
under my feet in the pathway, — sounds that I felt might 
send the notice of my approach to whatever was wait- 
ing for me by the cross and the immortelle on the 
murder-rock. Though the broken branches were senti- 
nelling my advent, I kept on, with a cold shiver now 
and then quivering all over me, but never for a mo- 
ment going deeper than the skin. Brain and heart as 
yet were true to their purpose of folly, that seemed 
like madness to me then. It did not take me long to 
reach the objective point of my journey. I have 
described the spot in another part of this narrative, 
and therefore will not repeat its topographical charac- 
teristics ; suffice to say that it was somewhat different 
in sentiment than when I had looked upon it in the 
sunshine. Then I had seen a visitor sitting quietly and 
unconcerned on the ridge of the rock, looking down, 
with a cigar between his lips, at the spot — always a 
thrilling sight — where the girl had fallen ; and I 
had seen young girls munching sandwiches around the 
scene, and jabbering of the massacre of one of their 
mates; but now, with nothing there but the night 
and the spirit of the event, the weird-looking trees 
with their limbs reaching hither and thither in such a 
way as to make me feel that I was beneath the dome 



82 WAS IT A GHOST? 

of an iron-barred prison-room. I hold it to be utterly 
impossible for any man, unless he is brutalized and of 
a sympathetic nature no higher than a quadruped, to be 
alone in such a place, with such a preface as it had 
been my fate to meet with, and not experience an 
accelerated throb of his pulse. I do not say that he is 
necessarily bound to be frightened, but something so 
near akin to it that only our self-conceit prompts us to 
draw the line of difference. 

I was there to submit myself to one test, and apply 
the other to what I had previously seen. The one I 
was already undergoing ; for it may readily be believed 
that an immense amount of subtle pressure was placed 
upon me. The accumulated proofs of a lifetime, as to 
the existence of unearthly presences and imperfectly 
disproved legends of ghostly visitations and adven- 
tures, bore down upon me with the wizard night and 
spectral forms of trees. And when I placed myself ex- 
actly on the blood-stained spot, I looked around with 
the certainty of being confronted by the apparition 
whose existence I was there to determine. Now, 
thought I, is the opportunity, — this the place for a reve- 
lation. What other man will ever come again with so 
foolhardy a brain and give the witnesses or the victim 
a chance so appropriate and so melodramatic? If any 
one does venture upon the trial, to a scene so fresh 
with gory associations, from my soul I pity him, and 



WAS IT A GHOST? 83 

would blame ; but this species of curiosity is not gener- 
ally diffused throughout society. But I was there and 
awaited whatever issue might transpire. I was doubt- 
less in a sublimated condition of rapport, as the medi- 
umistic philosophers term it ; a human instrument of a 
thousand strings, that the feeblest ghost might play 
upon with ever so withered a hand. But none came 
to inform or frighten me, and not a sound other than 
the low clicking of the wood insects broke the magic 
ring of silence that closed in with such profundity of 
pathos this terrible situation. To attempt to go away, 
I found required more nerve than to get there ; for now 
I must turn my back and place myself in the traditional 
position in which cowardice is said to place its victims; 
but, with the cold creepings renewed with double 
energy, I turned and walked with an excited compos- 
ure away from the spot, down the hill, through the 
gateway that opens eastward into the Dedham road, 
and then, with half a dozen sighs of relief, straight 
home. 

" Can you recognize that man again ? " from the chief, 
is always sounding in my ear. What man ? Did I not 
go to the place where he should have met me, if he was 
in any way witness to that murder? Sometimes I think 
it was the man himself, but not in the flesh. If in the 
flesh, he never would have come so near the scene of his 
hideous mischief; if in the spirit, then he had committed 



84 WAS IT A GHOST? 

suicide, or died of the disease of terror, and was wan- 
dering in the accomplishment of a curse and an expia- 
tion. Who knows but what it may be so, and who can 
say it is not so, any more than I can assert it is so? 
Or was it the father, who, since I wrote the description 
above, I have heard was no longer living? If it was 
the father's spirit, then I have something to say about that 
matter ; and when I said that I could recognize the man, 
I meant I might be able to do so if there is a photograph 
of him that I could get at. Close and open your eyes 
quickly while looking at a person passing by your win- 
dow, and you will have some idea of the view I had of 
the profile of this vision. I have seen in official pos- 
session, filed away among the other papers appertaining 
to this case, something that evinced that this dead father 
was taking active interest in the search after the mur- 
derer. I am not at liberty to recite the mode of that 
interest, nor am I called upon by any logical process to 
affirm that he does take an interest, or to deny that he 
does. I only know that there are similar circumstances 
connected with this phase of the subject, that a very 
large class of the community would attach importance 
to, but all involved in such a labyrinth of mystery as to 
defy positive recognition and the ordinary tests of evi- 
dence. 

Assume as a fact that a spirit, taking to itself the form 
of a man, had appeared to me, there at once grows out 



WAS IT A GHOST? 85 

of that admission this other question : Why should so 
extraordinary a circumstance, such a miracle, in fact, 
have been developed ? For what purpose was that spirit 
there ? Denying, as I do, that it would have been a mir- 
acle, I take up the question and attempt my reply. In 
the first place, I am no sectarian ; least of all am I a 
spiritualist ; and if I am anything of a creed man, — which 
the Lord grant I am ! — I am of a church that is founded 
on the system of marvels, as indeed, for that matter, 
are all churches, Christian or Pagan. The Saviour of 
mankind, let me with all reverence say, is admitted to 
have been duplex in character, — mortal for our sympa- 
thies, divine for our worship. If he suffered death, — 
which some doubt he did, but only the semblance of 
death, — his spirit was no more existent after his execu- 
tion than before it, and consequently he had power to rise 
from the sepulchre where they had laid him and appear 
to the soldiers and to the holy women. That he did 
appear we have the evidence of the great apostles and 
the contemporary legends of the Roman narrators. In- 
deed, it is not only asserted that he was manifest after 
death, but that ghosts walked the streets of Jerusalem, 
and when the veil of the temple was rent, the graves 
gave up their dead. These were the phenomena of a 
sublime epoch, — an epoch that in the death of a God was 
grander and more inexplicable than the incident of the 
earth's formation, and that of the stars and skies that are 

8 



86 WAS IT A GHOST? 

over it. All events have their purposes, and I can see the 
purpose here that should evoke these wonders. His 
mission had reached the point where the spiritual mani- 
festations must overshadow the recollections of his cor- 
poreal existence, and prove to the world, by tangible 
exhibition, that beyond the grave there was a life. The 
Scriptures teem with the legends of spirits, — of ghosts, 
if you like that word better, — and men of all the known 
wisdom of those days believed in them, because they 
seemed to have seen them. Why should they have 
been prevalent then, and not now? Who can dare 
answer that question, or dare deny, with proof to back 
the denial, that such things never did exist, or, existing, 
appear to human vision ? As well tell me that the same 
vegetables did not have life then as now, the same qual- 
ities of sand and superficial soil and rocks ; and indeed 
have not certain plants, that were for centuries lost to 
human cultivation, been revived? Nothing is lost, 
nothing changes, though we call reproduction change, 
and flatter ourselves that we have spoken a great phi- 
losophy. Why is the world full of ghost-stories outside 
of the Scriptures? Because ghost-stories have been 
veritable facts, — these lay ghost-stories travelling along- 
side of the clerical ghost-stories of the Inspired Book, 
and substantiating to the common appreciation of all 
mankind the veritable uess of the Bible. Who knows 
but that they are the vehicles by which Supreme Wis- 



WAS IT A GHOST? 87 

dom conveys to the intelligence of the unwise and the 
unlettered, the solemn truth of a hereafter? Who so 
arrogant in his wisdom as to be able to rise to the proof 
that it may not be so ? The atrocity of self-conceit is 
more terrible than the atrocity of ignorance ; the one is 
an active crime, the other a passive submission. The 
impossible means the possible. It is a favorite dogma 
with the utilitarian doctors, that nothing is impossible 
to the genius of man. Is there anything impossible to 
our Creator, other than the impossibility of making a 
mistake ? If man invents a machine which defies all the 
previous laws, or theories supposed to be laws because 
nothing had happened to prove that they were not laws, 
are we to reject it on that account, and because it hap- 
pens to be beyond our uneducated and unprepared ca- 
pacity ? Is the Creator of all to be limited and only his 
creature unlimited ? How often, in the midst of a great 
accident, has not some mind suggested a redress totally 
at variance with the rules by which the accident was 
produced, creating a surprise to usual circumstances, 
and checking the catastrophe before it could recover its 
equanimity and prearranged and understood mode of 
conduct ! Cannot the Maker interpose at his pleasure 
such surprises ? But we will be told that he never in- 
terrupts the harmonious action of his great rules. 
Where do we find these rules so as to enable us to say 
when they are infringed or deviated from ? How long 



.88 WAS IT A GHOST? 

have we been in possession of the habits of the beaver 
and the bee ? and yet they were a part of his great 
rules and system of order. Every day science is bring- 
ing new lights to bear upon old ant-hills as well as upon 
old mountains, and the shadow of a fern-leaf on a rock, 
the ghost of a fish-bone in a strata are sufficient for a 
theory on the momentous and mysterious history of our 
own illustrious race. If scattered bones of a mammoth, 
when reunited by the wire-work of a naturalist, are 
evidences of Noah's or Deucalion's flood, where are we to 
draw the line upon circumstantial evidence and testi- 
mony in substantiation of other facts and possibilities ? 
There are more tangible proofs of the existence of 
ghosts than there are of the existence of Noah's ark. The 
hush of the night, the solitude of forests, the loneli- 
ness of limitless prairies suggest, to the most unimagin- 
ative mind something more than the physical sense of 
desertion and isolation ; and yet that is no proof that a 
mystic band of weird spirits are with you in those 
dreary hours and wanderings ; but whatever is suggested 
proceeds from a thing that is able to suggest, and what- 
ever the mind grapples with of the material or the imma- 
terial exists in some form or other, intangible, but no 
less existent. The opponents of the theory of the ex- 
istence of ghosts, and their power to appear, use one 
word that conveys all their logic, and that word is the 
contemptuous vulgarism, Bosh ! And then they will 



WAS IT A GHOST? 89 

advance with weaker argument the logic of bold contra- 
diction, as if they had just returned from a trip into the 
regions of the future and an examination of the powers 
and rules and intents of the Providence, with an exact 
catalogue of his attributes and short-hand notes to be 
written out at their leisure, of all he has done, is doing, 
and is going to do. Faraday could analyze vapor, but, 
with all his retorts and crucibles and chemicals, he never 
could weigh a scintilla of a human thought. Such men 
grasp vapor in their hand, and will tell you of what it is 
composed ; and they tell you truly, and we, though con- 
sciously ignorant, have no foothold for a doubt. The 
preacher rises in his pulpit, and, from his sectarian books, 
and more sectarian training, interprets to you the sub- 
limest dogmas of the Apocalypse ; and woe to the mem- 
ber of his flock who raises an impious question against 
his dictatorial assertions. But if your neighbor, — near 
whom you have been living all your life, whose word 
stands pre-eminent in all matters of business, into whose 
care you would place your wife or your daughter, and 
to whose honor you would leave it to execute your last 
will and testament, in behalf of the loved ones, — was to 
tell you that he had seen a ghost, and calmly relate the 
incident with the proofs and the tests, you would be 
very likely to laugh in his face, and tell the next person 
you met that you were afraid neighbor so-and-so was a 
8* 



90 WAS IT A GHOST? 

little weak in the upper story, or was telling what was 
not true. 

The elegant dictators of theory speak of the belief in 
the existence of ghosts as the " vulgar belief in ghosts 
and goblins," and get rid of it in that summary maimer. 
But the very fact that it is vulgar, as they term it, is a 
strong point against them. If we could get the Scrip- 
tures pure and exempt from mixed and muddled inter- 
pretations, free from the garbage of a host of foreign 
lingual transformations, and in its original " Vulgate," 
we should not have the world troubled with more creeds 
than they can invent gods to preside over, or devils to 
operate in. The word vulgar is not to be used always 
as inclusive of the " low-born and the uneducated." 
The vulgar in this country believe in the imperialism of 
the ballot-box ; in Russia and Prussia and England, and 
elsewhere, of monarchies, in the divine right of kings ; 
and demagogues in all realms, like dogmatists of all 
creeds, have no faith at all, but use the belief of the 
masses for their own purposes. With the majority of 
mankind exists the supreme attribute of common sense, 
and yet they all, more or less, believe in the existence 
of ghosts. The hair-splitters of theology and other 
ethics, for sake of discipline, would drive the old stage- 
coach where the people would rush the locomotive ; and 
as in the beginning, fishermen and carpenters were the 
recipients of divine truths, or the media of revelations, 



WAS IT A GHOST? 91 

so now, while abstract and abstruse sciences occupy the 
minds of the enlighteners, the plain truths of Christian 
doctrine are held with other beliefs, relatively necessary 
to our nature, in the legendary, gossiping, and enduring 
belief of the masses. 

It will be asked, For what purpose do your ghosts ap- 
pear? To accomplish what end that human intelligence 
cannot effect? I say, again turn back to your Bible, 
and you will have your questions answered. 

There are other needs now that did not then exist. 
Society is not the same ; the ordinary laws of justice, 
of health, of life itself, are not the same. There are a 
thousand more appliances now, than there were, by 
which human life can be destroyed or preserved, — gun- 
powder, steam, machinery, with their countless adjuncts 
of power, on one side, and chemistry, with ether, 
and other discoveries, on the other. And as science 
becomes the assistant to the conveniences of mankind, in 
the same ratio it becomes his slayer. Events transpire 
now that were not dreamed of in former days, because 
of the increased forces that act upon latent ideas. 
Sixty, fifty, forty years ago, though Death had his am- 
ple harvest, he had not the immense scythes of steam- 
boats and railroads with which to do his work of 
destruction ; and now and then we have isolated facts 
published, with all the details of authenticity, of dreams 
that warned a voyager from the water or a traveller from 



92 WAS IT A GHOST? 

the cars, when afterwards it has proved that disaster befell 
both modes of travel. The remedy is to the need, and 
who can say that there have not been innumerable warn- 
ings, by visitations and dreams, of which the public never 
has any account, owing to the seclusion of the parties, 
or their natural reticence and unwillingness to have 
their stories made the subject of a paragraph and a 
sneer ? 

There are purposes in the Almighty wisdom which 
we cannot fathom, and religion herself, speaking from 
the misty summits of theological controversy, cries to 
her votaries to have faith where they cannot have com- 
prehension ; or, in other words, to believe without 
understanding. Do I, a ghost-seer, ask for more ? 

You ask, for what purpose did this ghost — if ghost 
it was — cross your path? I could retort, and ask 
why that man — if it was a man — crossed my path ? 
But I affirm that there was a purpose, and though I did 
not see it then, I may see it soon. Who can tell but 
what this revival of that mysterious horror may not 
lead to renewed activity in the police department? 
Who knows but it may be read by the murderer, and, 
awakening in his breast the smouldering embers of re- 
morse, make him do those eccentric things which lead 
vigilance to observe and assist in the detection of the 
guilty? I never would have written this narrative if 
that misty figure had not confronted me on that night, 



WAS IT A GHOST? 93 

and perhaps it may have been his intention to excite in 
me the idea of writing out these transactions, and thus 
awakening the slumbering or pausing authorities to a 
more active investigation. 

Why did he select me, if I was not appropriate to 
his purpose? And I will say now, and with all truth, 
that, from that time to this moment, I have been haunted 
with a vague urging to write this work, and give it to 
the public ; and now that I have done so, it may so 
happen that I will see that thing once more coming to 
assure me, in some way consistent with his condition, 
that his intention, so far as I was concerned as an agent, 
is accomplished. I shall not be surprised if it should 
occur. 



xni. 

THE DOCTOR'S STORY. 

Let me relate, as briefly as I can, a very singular 
incident that happened some years ago in Baltimore. 
The narrator was a man with whom I had been brought 
up from youth to manhood. His father was my father's 
family physician, a doctor of high standing; and the 
son who told and acted a part in the story was then a 
practising physician in Washington, where he still 
practises. A party of us were together at the house of 
his father, and the ghost subject was introduced. My 
friend % argued against their existence, as most doctors 
do ; but in the midst of our conversation he said that, 
notwithstanding his theory, he must tell us of a re- 
markable occurrence that happened within his own 
personal experience. 

Two years previously he had occupied the professor's 
chair of Practical Anatomy (I believe that is the 
phrase) in the Medical College of Baltimore, though 
then not more than twenty-three or four years of age. 
His remarkable skill, systematized by study in the 
famous medical schools of Paris, had justified his selection 
for the important post. During this period, or some time 

94 



WAS IT A GHOST? 95 

before my friend accepted the professorship, the mob 
had broken into the medical college, actuated by a sen- 
timent of horror at the idea of the bodies of their dead 
friends being stolen from the grave and placed under the 
knife, and subjected the faculty and students to great 
personal peril. The riot being quelled, it was deter- 
mined to make such arrangements as would entirely 
elude the suspicions of the people. 

For this purpose the upper portion of the building 
was converted into a large dissecting-room, with the 
windows hermetically sealed, so that no light could be 
perceived from the outside, and consequently lead to a 
renewal of an attack. Thus at night the faculty was 
secure from observation, and whatever of light was 
needed during the day came through glass inserted in 
the roof. To add to the security, a private stairway 
was arranged, so that if the mob did break in by the 
only publicly known entrance, the students and profes- 
sors would be enabled to escape. The egress to this 
private stairway from the lecture-room was by a door, 
the bolt of which, shooting into a socket, was within the 
room, and could not be moved from without. This 
private escape-door was at the other end of the dissect- 
ing-room. And this is my friend's story : — 

He had made arrangements with the janitor of the 
medical college, who was also a sexton, to have the 
body of a female on the dissecting-table on a certain 



96 WAS IT A GHOST? 

night, as he wanted to make some specific studies for 
his lecture of the next day. On the evening when the 
body was to be ready for him, he had accepted an invi- 
tation to a small party, at the house of one of the pro- 
fessors, and thither he went, pre-arranging with one of 
the students to leave at eleven t)'clock, and go together 
to accomplish his examination. At the appointed hour 
he made a sign to his companion, and they withdrew. 
Arriving at the college, he entered by his pass-key, 
found a couple of candles on the table in the lower 
hall, ascended the usual stairway, and, arriving at the 
door of the lecture-room at the top of the building, 
stopped for a moment to hang up their cloaks and hats. 
Then he applied the key to the lock, and entered with the 
candles lit, of course. A deep gloom pervaded the dis- 
secting-room, — a gloom that was increased by the 
feeble light of the two candles, and upon the table lay, 
under the fearful cloth, the subject for the night's work. 

Without any other thought in their minds save the 
plain matter-of-fact idea of work, they advanced to the 
dissecting-board, — the doctor towards the head of the 
corpse, the student passing round to the other side. 
As the latter was in the act of turning, he- lifted his 
candle and exclaimed, "Doctor, who is that?" point- 
ing: at the same time toward the centre of the room. 

"I do not know," replied the doctor, thinking the 
question applied to the body before him ; but no sooner 



WAS IT A GHOST? 97 

had he raised his eyes than he was struck by the atti- 
tude of his friend. He was holding the candle above 
his head and looking away from the table, and the doc- 
tor, following the direction of his gaze, discovered the 
fio'ure of a man standing some twelve or fifteen feet 
distant. My friend said that his only impression was 
that they were in for a row ; concluding that the mob 
had found out the secret stairway, and got into the hall 
for the purpose of breaking up the dissecting operations. 
With this idea he turned round the table, and, as he 
advanced toward the figure, exclaimed, "Who are 
you ? What do you want here ? " In his advance 
movement he was joined by the student, neither for an 
instant having the idea of a supernatural visitation 
in their minds. As quickly as they pushed forward, 
as rapidly did the figure retreat until it reached the door 
leading to the head of the stairway, when it disap- 
peared. Supposing that the man had passed out as he 
had come in, they rushed to the door to follow, but 
they found the door fastened and the bolt shot within 
the staple. With difficulty they forced it back, for it 
had never been used since it was put on, — no occasion 
requiring it, — and then they descended the steps to 
the outer doorway, which they found closed, and from 
within. 

Puzzled by these mysteries, they reascended to the 
room, passed through, and immediately descended to 
9 



98 WAS IT A GHOST? 

arouse the janitor, and see if he could give any clue to 
the adventure. The janitor inquired of them if they 
could describe the appearance. Yes ; and they did so ; 
for they had had a full and accurate view of his face, 
of his dress, and of his height. "Then," said the jani- 
tor, " it was a ghost. That man was the husband of the 
woman you had upon the table. I buried them both, 
and knew them well, and he answers exactly to your 
description." 

The doctor, when questioned by us, said the figure 
was that of a tall man, dressed in ordinary clothes (I 
forget, now, whether he gave us a full description or 
not, but rather think he did not), with a very severe 
and stern face, and kept his eyes fixed upon the corpse, 
one hand upraised and pointing to it, conveying the im- 
pression to his mind of an order not to touch it, — a 
gesture of rebuke, or a motion to forbid. 

The doctor and his friend went back to the vestibule 
of the dissecting-room, resumed their outer-garments, 
and retired. The janitor fulfilled the doctor's order, 
which was to remove and rebury the body, and find him 
the body of a woman whose husband would not inter- 
fere with his professional occupations. 

Now, here is a true ghost story, if there ever was 
one. Two persons saw the apparition, and a third party 
verified it. The moral is plain enough. The husband 



WAS IT A GHOST? 99 

was there to prevent the disgusting mutilation of his 
wife's body, and his purpose was accomplished. 

The doctor said that nothing would have induced him 
to lay his hands upon that woman's form when he re- 
membered the appealing look of his extraordinary 
visitor. It was not personal fear or vulgar superstition, 
but a higher motive ; for inasmuch as no Christian gen- 
tlemen would touch with unholy motive the form of a 
living wife in the presence of a living husband, so he 
could not disturb the sanctity of her spectral modesty 
before the face of her suppliant, dead husband. To 
those who accept the story of the apparition, the logic 
of the motive must be evident ; and if so in this case, 
why not in all others? Or it may be as it is in life. 
We meet our acquaintances every day on the street ; 
they pass us without seeing us, or without our seeing 
them ; and yet how absurd it would be to deny their 
being on the street, walking straight on, absorbed be- 
yond recognition, simply because they did not stop and 
explain to us the motive that brought them there ! 
Grhosts, in like manner, may cross the clown's staring 
vision or the philosopher's calmer sight, and, because 
they do not pause and prattle of their object and tell 
them the motive of their appearance, are we to conclude, 
as a logical theory demonstrated, that that is a good 
reason to conclude they were not there at all ? Must all 
facts be denied until the motives are discovered ? Is a 



100 WAS IT A GHOST? 

negative so powerful as to overwhelm an affirmative? 
If so, the plea of not guilty offered by a criminal should 
be enough to justify his discharge, despite of circum- 
stantial evidence strong enough to hang him or half a 
hundred like him. 

As I stood that night out there in the fatal wood, and 
thought over the murder and the murderer, I conceived 
a plan of punishment by which, alone, I thought he 
could appease the outraged sense of human tenderness 
for things so young as he had slaughtered. 



XIV. 

MY PLAN OF PUNISHMENT. 

And this is my plan : 

Chain him to the rock on which he took her life, — one 
chain to each wrist, one chain to each ankle, and an 
iron hoop locked around his waist, and this, too, fast- 
ened to the rock. Lay him on the spot where she was 
found. Then leave him to himself and to the scenery 
which he has disfigured so fearfully ; but watch that no 
demon out of the Davenport or Eddy witchcraft or 
mancraft boxes help him to unloose those shackles. 
Lay him with his face to the avenging skies, and place 
food within his reach, but so arrange it that it rests only 
on the spots over which the red current of her life had 
ebbed. Let him alone with the night, and the night 
will give him such a tangled and convulsed spasm . of 
horror as will make his very soul shriek aloud for two 
almost impossible things, yet awhile, death or the Lord's 
pardon. And there he should remain until every hair 
of his head had become white, and every black spot of 
his soul livid. Perhaps the spirit that confronted me 
in silence and in peace might come to him and watch 
him, — watch him till the dawn broke and the eyes of 
9* 101 



102 WAS IT A GHOST? 

the bright heavens took its place to look at him. And 
after that let the authorities handle him as they pleased. 

The reader will observe that in this project of mine 
I follow out the classic ideas of the most elegant peoples 
and refined poets of the world, who insisted before all 
things else that the dramatic unities should be attended 
to. In that respect my plan would be without a flaw. 

And now, if I am asked for my theory of the murders, 
my answer would be, that it might not be politic to give 
it publicity. This much, however, I will say, reserving 
the more probable theory for future emergencies. There 
is a link wanting at this time that must be found before 
any progress can be made to a conclusive judgment. 
The children left their temporary home intending to re- 
turn in time for the boy to attend his afternoon school. 
Their objective point, as I said before, was May's 
wood. This question then arises : What occurred to 
make the girl, the senior, change her mind and go far- 
ther away from home, — to Bussey's wood ? Going there 
would change her original programme, relative to the 
boy. Did some one meet them as if by accident, — some 
one whom they knew, — and did that person induce her 
to continue to Bussey's wood? Were there any evi- 
dences that they stopped at all at May's wood ? But 
what inducement could he use to get her to Bussey's 
wood? The mother might have been the inducement. 
They knew she was employed at Quincy, nearer to 



WAS IT A GHOST? 103 

Bussey's than to May's wood. They might have been 
told that she would meet them at the former, and it 
would be a pleasant surprise. Another question pre- 
sents itself: What could have been the motive to get 
her to secluded, distant Bussey ? I answer, self-defence. 
Self-defence against two children? Yes. The girl was 
an intelligent, observant girl, and she may have been 
cognizant of some crime, the revelation of which would 
have brought ruin and punishment upon the perpetrator ; 
or the perpetrator might, in his consciousness of the 
possibility of her having discovered him, come to the 
resolution to dispose forever of any chance of her 
being a witness against him. They were poor children, 
and had only money enough to go and come from May's 
wood ; and yet that money was found upon the girl. 
Consequently, she had not been at any expense in getting 
to Bussey's wood by the cars. The murderer 'paid 
their fare! After reaching the thick shades around the 
rock, and giving her time to become confident of his 
integrity and friendship, — so much so as to be sufficiently 
at ease to commence the weaving of leaf chaplets, 
waiting the promised interview with her mother, — he 
sent the boy down to the brook for water, and where he 
was subsequently found. Then he turned upon the 
girl ; for if the boy had been near by, his cries could 
not have failed to arouse assistance, for there were men 
working within three hundred yards of the place where 



104 WAS IT A GHOST? 

her body was discovered. He must have brought about 
a separation between the children, and at that spot ; 
for he could not have murdered them together, and 
there, in that broad sunlight, with the swirl of the 
mower's scythes down in the near meadow evident to his 
ear, carried the body of the boy to the brook at the foot 
of the hill, and thrown it among the alders. He killed the 
girl as soon as the boy was out of sight, and then he 
followed the little fellow to the place where he had sent 
him, and slaughtered him in the gloom of those thick 
bushes. 

Now, who was that man whom she would have ex- 
posed ? With whose acts could she have by locality and 
association of daily life become acquainted? Was he 
from Lynn, or its vicinity, — where she had been living 
before she came to Boston? Or was the discovery, or 
the imagined discovery, of a crime made in Boston, and 
of some one living in Boston? The girl was simply 
murdered, — no duplex crime, — attacked while she was 
sitting with leaves and wreaths in her lap, and the first 
blows were delivered upon her back and sides, and after 
that in front and in great confusion. The boy was 
killed, not because he saw the murder done upon his 
sister, but because he could have told who it was that 
accompanied them from Boston, or joined them at 
May's wood,, where they were expected, or anywhere 
along the first part of that terrible journey. There was 



WAS IT A GHOST ? 105 

no other motive for his death. If the man had not been 
seen by the boy, and known personally to the boy, he 
would have been alive now. Consequently it was some 
one who was intimate with those children and who 
could not allow the boy to live any more than he could 
allow the girl to live. It was a double self-defence. 

Then who was that man ? I think he lives ; I think that 
he walks these streets daily. I think that some of us at 
some time or other have sat beside him in the cars going 
to and fro the city roads. I think that now, as I sit here 
writing, he is sitting somewhere hereabouts with his 
face dropped over upon his clenched hands, looking at 
that dark rock out there in the woods and wondering if 
he will yet reach the end of his life by the common 
methods of disease. I think that he ofteu passes by 
the police station, with a frightened look in his eyes, and 
turns a corner quickly when one of the big police guards 
stalks like a blue-coated and silver-plated Nemesis tow- 
ard him. I see him, in my mind's eye, when he meets a 
girl and boy upon the sidewalk, — how he stares at them 
with a fixed gaze, wondering how those two whom he 
killed out yonder, in the old woods, are looking now ! 
— and, when this book is advertised, I can watch him 
wondering what it is like ; and then I trace him in his 
stealthy and frightened step to the bookstore to buy it ; 
and, when he turns these leaves and comes to this sen- 
tence, I hear him curse me, and know that he would 



106 WAS IT A GHOST ? 

like to have his hand upon my throat for recalling the 
memory of his deed. But I tell him that he will not 
escape. He may pretend to pray when others pray, to 
hide his wicked past in the garb of piety ; he may mut- 
ter his wrath on all of us who seek him for his punish- 
ment ; he may fly now the advancing steps of justice : 
but, as he flies, the feet of justice may become inac- 
tive, while it sends over every railroad and steamboat 
line of travel, by every wire that vibrates to all the 
remotest places of retreat, the command of his arrest. 
Wherever he is now, and wherever he may be then, he 
is doomed ; and at this instant he knows it and feels it so 
in every fibre of his accursed carcass, even to those blood- 
stained hands beneath whose nails there yet remains 
the red record of his crime. I have given one theory, 
without in the least asserting it to be the correct one.; 
but it is as good a theory as the public can get hold of 
outside of that mysterious room in the City Hall wherein 
the tall chief of police weaves his webs. 

There being nothing else but murder in the girl's 
death, we must seek for some motive that could have 
driven that man to so terrible a necessity. What other 
than the one I have suggested ? Was it monomania for 
human blood ? That could have been gratified among a 
denser population than he would be likely to find in 
Bussey's wood. And monomania of that kind is not 
common, nor is it of sudden growth, striking and slak- 



WAS IT A GHOST? 107 

ing but ODce. It seeks its victim anywhere, without 
plot and without care of consequences, anywhere and 
everywhere. It is a madness that has no fear and is 
destitute of prudence. But here was deliberate, deep- 
plotted murder. It required skill to induce the girl to 
go farther away from home and her pledged duty to her 
brother. The filial sense was invoked as paramount to 
the fraternal. It required skill to separate the children. 
It was done. Does all that look as if the man was 
crazed for blood, or blind by drink? I think there was 
neither here. I cannot give my other theory ; for, if it 
did not detect in this case, it might suggest an excellent 
method of repeating just such another crime, should any 
such be in contemplation. The enemy of society and 
law studies the tactics of justice, and frequently the 
plan of detection, if penetrated by the culprit, becomes 
his surest chart of escape. There may, after all, — but I 
don't think so, — have been two persons engaged in this 
series of murders ; and in that light read the short re- 
cital that follows, and perhaps, when the mystery shall 
be resolved by judicial precision, you may turn back to 
this singular incident and compare it with the concluding 
scenes of the catastrophes I have been treating of. If 
truth be stranger than fiction, then the marvels of the 
veritable make larger drafts upon our credulity than the 
fabrications of the imaginist, and there can be no harm 
done if we prepare ourselves for revelations that in time 



108 WAS IT A GHOST? 

may be made to us, and whose mysticism, enlightened 
by the practical test of law, will stand forever in the dry 
tomes of jurisprudence, subduing the impertinence of 
our dogmatical self-conceit, and establishing the fact 
that truth is a principle that can traverse the air, as well 
as walk arm in arm with us in our daily habits. This 
is the incident. 

Dr. Binn relates in his book, published some years 
ago, the following : — 

w A young and beautiful quadroon girl named Duncan, 
and residing in Jamaica, West Indies, was murdered in 
a retired spot a few paces from the public highway. 
[Such was the case in the murder of Isabella Joyce.] 
Upon discovery of the deed, and investigation by the 
coroner, a reward, amounting to a large sum of money 
[similar in the Joyce case] , was offered for the detec- 
tion of the guilty party, but without avail. A year 
passed over with no light from the judicial lantern illu- 
mining the black mystery of the deed, and the case 
was in process of lapsing into oblivion, when two ne- 
groes named Pendrill and Chitty were arrested for some 
minor thefts and lodged in prison. One was placed in 
the Kingston penitentiary and the other in Falmouth 
jail. The distance between these two places was eighty 
miles. It must be borne in mind that these two men 
were ignorant of their mutual arrest and confinement, 
though as it turned out afterward Were well acquainted 



WAS IT A GHOST? 109 

with each other. In the course of their imprisonment 
they became restless and talked in their sleep, and then 
conversations were addressed to a young girl who, it 
would seem, stood by and upbraided them with her mur- 
der. They would then entreat her to go away. This 
happened so frequently as to lead to inquiries which re- 
sulted in the conviction of those two haunted men, of 
the murder that had so long baffled the detection of 

justice. 

10 



XV 

THE CHLLDKEN. 

In a court of justice, if I was put upon my oath, I 
could not swear that it was a ghost that I saw when I 
stood at the end of the garden on that luminous night ; 
nor would I swear that it was a man with his vitality in 
force ; but I would swear that I saw something that 
looked like a man, but might have been a ghost. It 
acted as if it might have been either, — but if a man, like 
a crazy one, and who had a charm to subdue, upon the 
instant and without effort, the temper of two severe 
watch-dogs, one a mastiff, the other a bull, and also to 
suspend for more than a second my power of vision. 

After I had finished writing my narrative, and thought 
that I had nothing further to do in this business besides 
giving my manuscript into the hands of the printer, I 
became possessed of two photographs kindly lent to my 
curiosity by the chief of police. They are the portraits 
of Isabella and John Joyce. My first idea was to have 
them multiplied and affixed somewhere in my pages, but 
then I thought of the illustrated papers with their 
abominable attempts to illustrate by the pencil every 

110 



WAS IT A GHOST? Ill 

sp:ism to which human nature is incident, and was 
stopped at once from that design. 

The face of the girl is bright, expressive, and, in a 
degree, pretty. Had she lived to womanhood she 
might have grown into what is called a fine woman. 
The features are large and regular, the eyes full of 
vivacity and good temper, the nose prominent and well 
shaped, the mouth pleasant, and indicative of resolution. 
Altogether the girl had a generous and loving kind of 
lookout, and not rare in the species at her budding and 
buoyant age. She looks like a child begining to see 
the vague outline of the sea on which she must voyage 
with the rest, and not at all having such quick destruc- 
tion in her thoughts, as came to her ere she heard the 
breakers of human experience sobbing on the shore. 
She was not too young to die, but too young to be 
slaughtered. The boy's face is that of a child; but a 
bright and reflective little fellow, with a large de- 
velopment of brain, and, by the extreme innocence of 
his expression, casting a deeper shadow of crime upon 
the wretch who took away his life. Taking the photo- 
graph as a test, he seems to be about eight years old 
and no more, and with such a face that it must have 
been a sad thing for those who found him, to look upon 
with the mask of murder stamped upon it. 

I have also seen a bundle of papers, written over in 
large, straggling chirograph}^, and said to be communica- 



112 WAS IT A GHOST? 

tions of spirits, through mediums, upon the topic of the 
murders. There is one-half page written, so those say, — 
his wife, for instance, — who knew his " hand of write," 
by the dead father of the children. Their testimony, 
whatever it may be, has as yet been of no special 
advantage in directing investigation, at least as far as I 
know ; probably on the theory that if the souls of the 
departed undertook to interfere in the proceedings of 
our courts, they might produce embarrassing predica- 
ments, being so far as we are instructed in such matters 
incapable of appearing bodily on the witness-stand to 
testify to facts within their knowledge ; and, besides, it 
would be exceedingly inconvenient for our judicial 
officials to serve a summons upon them, as their places 
of special abode cannot, at present, be determined upon 
with any exactness outside of a graveyard directory. 
Cases are, however, upon the record wherein ghosts 
have pointed out such lines of proceedings as finally led 
to the proper adjustment of contested property and 
estates. Perhaps the day may reach us when not only 
the spirit of the law, and the spirit of the past, but the 
spirits of the dead, will have large control over the vexed 
condition of our temporary existence here. 



XYI. 



GHOSTS. 



Will it be impertinent if I say that I am no advo- 
cate of the spiritualistic doctrines? Will it be less out 
of place, if I add that I am no direct opponent of that 
wonderful creed, — new creed, some people call it ; but, 
in fact, as long established as the first death, — as old as 
man's first doubt, or his first impulse to worship the un- 
seen, or investigate the first difficulty? I assume no 
dictatorship of judgment, adhere to no prejudice or for- 
mula of education, or habit of social or sectional condi- 
tion, but place myself in that grand philosophic pause 
of suspended opinion. There have been good Turks, 
there are good Turks ; there have been good Jews, there 
are good Jews. One of the latter, leaving his old 
traditions, rules now the destiny of a great so-called, 
and properly so-called I believe, Christian Empire ; but 
because in our youth we have been led to think hard of 
bloody Mahomet, and the Jewish unbelievers of the first 
Christian era, when mysteries assumed the prerogative 
of logical religion, and faith was not as quick to con- 
ceive as it has been since, we are not justified in 
believing that the Turk and the Jew are beyond the 

* 10* 113 



114 WAS IT A GHOST? 

pale of our sympathies, and, for old deeds done under 
peculiar pressure, are to be anathematized from our hu- 
man charities. There are members known, of the 
spiritualist belief, to be as pure and spotless as any 
equal number of any other God-believing sect ; and 
while we cannot but look with feelings akin to pity at 
some of the phases of their peculiar practice, it behooves 
no man, limited as we all are in our claim to exact 
knowledge, to condemn the whole because some of 
their people do certain things, that, in the performance, 
border upon the absurd. 

The mystery of life is more mysterious than the 
mystery of death. In the first we would, if not gov- 
erned by the subjection of judgment to certain rules 
and discipline of faith, be led to believe in a thousand 
things that appeal to us daily by the miraculous condi- 
tion of their nature. Science, while it reveals, estab- 
lishes materiality ; and the farther it advances into the 
realms of air, the more it fills that air with material 
substances. Dare it go higher yet, and rob the firma- 
ment of all its poetry, its vague spirit of religious spir- 
ituality, and, sweeping away the dreams of the tenderest 
imaginations, build up the steps of the Eternal throne 
with granite boulders, and form of the Almighty a 
statue of specific gravity, with needs like our own, and 
humanly dependent on the vegetation and the atmos- 
phere of these terrestrial regions which astronomy 



WAS IT A GHOST? 115 

with its supernaturally endowed telescope has estab- 
lished as fact ? 

It may be an objection, founded upon some basis of 
common sense, that I have introduced what I call a 
veritable ghost into my work. I cannot help that. In 
fact I never would have written my book if I had not 
had that interview with what now, in all the sincerity 
that is left to a man in these abominable days, I believe 
and assert was a ghost; a real ghost, — no dramatic 
shade made up of an off-duty carpenter with an actor 
to speak his part, — a ghost arranged for the nonce with 
a screen between us, of vapory muslin ; but a sol- 
emn, a meaning, a power to move, but not a power to 
absolutely affright, ghost. In fact I see no reason to 
be frightened by them. Grant that they exist, — you 
never have heard of one that did harm to anybody. 
They have, it is to be supposed, thrown off the pas- 
sions of the flesh, with the flesh, — the passion of 
anger, the passion of mischief, and all the low and 
base adjunctives that adhere to us in our state of usual 
visibility. They are not monsters, but symbols, or 
aerial realities of our former friends. Even the ghost 
of Kobespierre, of Nero, or Jeffrey, would be harmless, 
bad as they were when encompassed in their fibrous 
shells of flesh. Ghosts, as a general rule of logic, can- 
not be as bad as those of earth with whom they have 
their interviews. And it is not to be supposed that 



116 WAS IT A GHOST? 

they always have a sublime or important mission to 
accomplish. If the rule holds good that Providence 
allows them to flit hither ward, the ghost of a wash- 
erwoman has as much right to appear to her suc- 
cessor of the soap-suds, as the ghost of Caesar to his 
slayer before the battle that settled the destiny of half a 
world. And the washerwoman's ghost could not do 
that, or would not even think of doing that, and yet she 
might have her homely mission, as important to her 
friends, as ghosts of a higher rank. But they all have 
their mission, the ghosts of demi-gods as well as the 
ghosts of plebeians. They easily establish, what other- 
wise could not be practically proved, the vexed ques- 
tion of the immortality of the soul. A testimony of a 
dead man would be as valuable to me, with regard to 
that matter, as the wire-drawn assertions of a man paid 
a large salary to keep good, and say that we turn into 
ghosts after all, — for they all say that. 

Now I most respectfully ask what harm does it do to 
believe in ghosts? Is it weakness? Then St. Paul 
was weak to idiocy, for he was the apostle of the 
supernatural, as the Bible will prove, if you choose to 
consult his record. Was our Saviour weak? It v/as 
he, — that supremely blessed, that uncontradictable 
authority, either iu assertion or suggestion — who took 
upon himself the spectral character, and asked Thomas 
to test him, by placing his hands upon the image of his 



WAS IT A GHOST? 117 

wounds. Or, if be was not a ghost, but a substantial 
form of flesh after his crucifixion, death then makes no 
difference in our condition, and is but a process without 
a change. Had his apostles and disciples disbelieved 
in his appearance after death, and hooted at the story- 
told of his ghost wandering toward them, where would 
be the Christian church to-day, and where the theory 
of the resurrection? We disbelieve now, and scoff at 
what the Saviour did, and his apostles saw, unless he 
was an impostor, and they liars. Do we in our churches, 
when we read the biblical narrative of the innumerable 
appearances, sneer at the book that tells us its contents 
are the result of divine inspiration, and every word is 
true? That man or woman would not be a church- 
member long who dared to do a thing so impious. 

If fault be found with me for writing a narrative with 
such a spectral thread of ghastly tissue running through 
its woof, what should they say of the king of the ink- 
plume, Shakespeare himself ? He fairly revels in 
ghosts. In the second part of " King Henry the Sixth," 
Bolingbroke, the conjurer, invokes a spirit. In "Julius 
Caesar," Brutus has his celebrated interview with the 
ghost of Caesar. In "Macbeth," the ghost of Banquo 
comes to the king's table and nods between the 
libations, frightening the king out of his royal wits; 
and in the " witch scene " we have the bubbling cal- 
dron, the armed head, a bloody child, a child crowned, 



118 WAS IT A GHOST? 

with a tree in his hand, and "eight kings," who pass 
across the stage, the last with a glass in his hand. 
What would the play of "Hamlet" be without the 
father's spirit wandering on the moonlit battlement, or 
the interview with the queen-mother, known as the 
miniature scene? In "Richard the Third," crowds of 
ghosts stalk through the tent of the hunchback king, 
and start him from his sleep ; and -Richmond, too, holds 
converse with them. The ghosts of Prince Edward, 
Henry the Sixth, Clarence, Rivers, Grey, Vaughan, 
Hastings, the two young Princes, Qaeen Ann, and 
Buckingham, stalk before the tyrant's vision, and curse 
him as they pass. Otway makes use of ghosts in his 
"Venice Preserved," and Sir Walter Scott wielded them 
in the machinery of his novels ; and the ponderous- 
brained Sam Johnson religiously believed in them. 
The ghosts of Shakespeare were born of the poetic 
faculty, and the legendary creed of the world's expe- 
rience. Place a rose, the sweetest you can find, under 
a glass case, and you shut out the odor that belongs to 
it. Is that odor dead and imperceptible because you 
have raised a barrier between it and your senses ? Does 
it not exist, even more potently, within its crystal 
prison? Because you do not perceive that sweetness, 
would you say it is not? Are our direct senses to 
settle all points of doubt and difficulty ? Or, let a man 
enter, then, who had never seen a rose, and you w T ere to 



WAS IT A GHOST? 119 

tell liim of the great fragrance of the flower of which 
bards have sung and Scriptures made similes, — would 
you not scoff him if he said such things were not pos- 
sible to a plaut like that, that looked like painted paper? 
Then how can you say anything about it who have 
never seen a ghost ? To your senses it may be as yet 
hidden by a barrier stronger than glass, but yet as 
transparent to others. But I do not write to argue, but 
only to suggest. I admit my own weakness and confess 
to doubts, and cannot place myself with indisputable 
certainty on any solid basis of logic, and therefore must 
allow great scope to others ; but since I have ventured 
to tell my story, I had a strong and natural desire to 
stand, as well as it was possible upon the platform of 
rational opinion, and felt that I had a right to attempt to 
place myself there. If any man can prove that I did not 
see exactly what I say I saw, let him do so, but let him 
not attempt to " pshaw " me out of the evidences of my 
senses, and proclaim from his stolid pedestal, called the 
"impossible," that I am a dreamer, a madman, and all 
that sort of adjectiveness which grows from ignorance 
of the noun substantives of reason. When he can come 
to me and show me the authority, not derived from his 
metaphysics or his sectarianism, or his prejudice, by which 
he is empowered to deny the possibility or the probability 
and actuality of ghosts, and settle then and forever that 
such things cannot be, I will admit that I was crazy; bereft 



120 WAS IT A GHOST? 

of reason ; at one moment gifted with eyesight, and the 
next deprived of it : things which, by the way, would 
be more at variance with the " order of Heaven," and 
more extraordinary, in fact, than the assumed appear- 
ance of that thing we call ghost ; and which, after all 
said, and done, and laughed, and sneered at, is that idea 
of the human hope baptized in our dreams and our 
theology, by the name of "Immortality." You cannot 
prove to a drowning man that he is not surrounded by 
water. You may tell him that he can swim ; but he 
will tell you that, though he can, he has the cramp. 
You may tell him that a ship without volition can float 
where he is struggling; but he will tell you that the 
ship has nothing to do with it. He believes in the things 
that he feels and sees around him, but which you do not 
experience, and he will not take your arguments and 
suggestions as the embodiment of an infallible life-pre- 
server. I saw what I saw ; prove to me that I did not 
see it, — for the question is with me and nobody else, 
— and prove it without the usual insolence, if you 
can ; remembering, in your endeavor to convince, that 
insult is more of an offence than an argument ; indeed, 
it is only used when argument is exhausted. 

The composing of an epic poem is held to be the 
highest achievement of the human mind. Ideality, or 
imagination, is the means used in the performance of 
the work. Ideality is the inspiration of religion, and 



WAS IT A GHOST? . 121 

without it religion would simply be a form of law, to be 
broken like other laws, and to be vindicated by penalties 
and processes similar to those imposed and employed in 
the vindication and substantiation of any other law. 
The ecclesiastical synonym for ideality is faith. 

If ideality be the source of the highest results of 
intellectual effort, and of religious belief, who can ven- 
ture to fabricate a chain with which to bind and circum- 
scribe its flights ? If man in power, for the supposed ben- 
efit of the man out of power, does so, it is merely the 
result of policy, or passion, or human prejudice, or 
selfishness ; and no man that ever lived, from the 
Pope of Rome to the backwood preacher, and from the 
preacher to the ethical moralist, has had that right 
inherent in his particular nature, to tax as a royalty the 
patent of the human mind to. the grand prerogative of 
thought. 

Canute, the king, tried an experiment of mastery 

with the tide. What other despot of school theory will 

make the same effort with the tidings of the brain of 

man, hoping for better success than the Danish fool? 

If there be such, so sure as the first known madman 

of the Hamlet race was driven from the beech, will the 

other be overwhelmed by the resistless force of that 

great wave of intelligence which has already grappled 

with the lightning, and taught it the babel language by 

which man expresses his endless wants. Man, when he 
11 



122 WAS IT A GHOST? 

seizes upon the great faculties of electricity, does not 
stultify himself by establishing a limit to its capacity. 
At first it was a rod upon a chimney that drew a 
spark from the thunder-storm ; then the galvanic bat- 
tery, to draw paralysis from limbs ; then the wire from 
city to city ; and now it passes beneath the throbbing 
bosom of the sea, and whispers the price of stocks or 
the policy of cabinets into the ear of a man who sits at 
his table, like a musician at his piano, taking out of the 
thunderbolts of Jove a language and a spirit that igno- 
rance would deny the possibility of being there. And 
what more will be accomplished by electricity? We 
stand upon the threshold of its domain, enlightened by 
flashes that invite and illumine to farther experiments. 
Doubt is the genius of discovery, but, at present, with 
regard to the supernatural, there is nothing proved ex- 
cept what we believe ; otherwise, the world would have 
but one creed. 



XVII. 

MANIFESTATIONS. 

As may be well imagined, a subject so conspicuous 
and mysterious as the dark deeds done in Bussey's 
wood, would not be allowed to pass over without some 
professional attempts on the part of the spiritualistic 
community to discover their hidden secret. "Seances" 
were called, and the force of mediumistic power en- 
listed and put in operation to extract the terrible reve- 
lation from some detective spirit among the dead ; with 
what result the police are best able to judge, and the 
culprit, too ; but it occurred to me that it might possi- 
bly amuse my readers to read some of the communica- 
tions relating to the topics I have been treating of, from 
the spirit world, through what is called trance mediums. 
The two or three that I shall take occasion to abridge 
were sent to the police head-quarters, and I have no 
doubt they were sent in good faith. The result of the 
incantations is of little moment, but I have understood 
that it was said somewhere by a presumed spirit, that 
they would tell all about the murders, and expose the 
culprit, if a sum of money would be raised competent 
to the support of the bereaved mother of the children. 

123 



124 WAS IT A GHOST? 

The fact that there were large rewards offered — and I 
believe they have not been withdrawn — should have 
satisfied them that if, through their agency, the mur- 
derer was detected, they could make over -the amount 
to Mrs. Joyce. I do not vouch for the truth of the 
rumor, but think it improbable, because it was an un- 
necessary demand under the circumstances. The occa- 
sions when, actuated by a mixed motive of curiosity 
and a desire to examine, I have witnessed the proceed- 
ings at these sittings of the faithful, have not had a 
very strong tendency to convince me that good spirits 
put their feet under the mahogany. To be sure my ex- 
perience has been limited, but it has been definite up to 
this period. I have not attended the public or profes- 
sional seances ; but there are many persons who are 
sceptics, yet strongly mediumistic, and able to make 
the table move across the room by the mere imposition 
of their hands. I have heard the alphabet repeated at 
my own room, where only one gentleman was present 
beside myself; and this gentleman, an involuntary and 
unprofessional medium, was of considerable power, and 
used that power for the purposes of investigation. 
Answers I have there witnessed to questions, that aston- 
ished me, — direct, satisfactory, and going back into the 
far and dim years of childhood, astonishing to my friend, 
as well as to myself, — facts that my own mind had 
entirely lost in the lapse of years, but which came up 



WAS IT A GHOST? 125 

to my recollection as vivid as if of yesterday's happen- 
ing. Sometimes my recollection has been corrected, 
and in such a way as to convince me that my idea of 
the circumstance had been erroneous. And then again, 
a something of intelligence would move the table, in 
answer to the alphabet, and tell such self-evident lies, 
with so enthusiastic a vivacity as to startle me into the 
belief that he had been the writer of bulletins for some 
newspaper during the late Southern conflict. And this 
assumed spirit would pass himself off as a deceased 
member of my family, staggering me with his knowl- 
edge, and from which bewilderment I confess I can find 
no present means of rational escape. I have, however, 
come pretty nearly to the conclusion that the spirit, or 
whatever it is, that I have alluded to above, has been 
our only visitor ; but the imagination cannot conceive a 
scheme so subtle as his has been to deceive us into the 
belief that those persons, whose character he pretended 
to represent, were in fact the very individuals them- 
selves ; and under ordinary circumstances few men 
could have been blamed had they been credulous of his 
representations. 

I have frequently tried by the most determined exer- 
cise of will, to force the responses into the channel I 
had mentally prepared for them ; but in no case, I must 
candidly confess, could I command obedience. This 
fact shook my theory of sympathetic influence, and 
it* 



126 WAS IT A GHOST? 

settled in that small sphere of experiment the vexed 
question of the power of mind to operate upon matter. 
My friend, who has the mediumistie faculty, made 
similar attempts, and always with like result. Let 
wiser heads than mine unravel and explain, by cogent 
and irresistible logic, these eccentric incidents, for I 
must admit my utter inability to explain them by any 
rules outside of those adopted by the spiritualist. But 
though I may have been a witness of these phenomena, 
it does not follow that I am a spiritualist, any more than 
I am of the mythological faith of pagan Greece, because, 
forsooth, I take delight in the statue of Minerva, go 
into raptures over that of Venus, and read with un- 
feigned enjoyment the poems of that prince of old idol- 
aters, blind but immortal Homer. 

I have before me a package of manuscript purporting 
to have been written by inhabitants of another w r orld, — 
by hands that have felt the pressure of the hand of 
death, and yet, it would seem, are able to express 
thought with the intelligence usually attributed to life. 
Oue of these communications purports to have been 
written by Isabella Joyce, the murdered girl, and 
another by her father, Stephen Joyce. 

The manuscript of the girl strikes me as of a better 
order of chirography than is usually to be found in that 
of children of her age ; while the father's is large and 
roughly emphatic, and bears the impress of a passion- 



WAS IT A GHOST? 127 

ate desire to discover the murderer and avenge the deaths 
of his children. Friends of Stephen Joyce assert that 
the formation of the writing is unmistakably similar to 
his ; but, as I have not been able to compare the dead 
man's penmanship. with anything done by him while on 
earth, I cannot pass judgment either of denial or verifi- 
cation. 

It would appear that, speedily after the murders were 
discovered, meetings were called of the spiritualists, in 
the hope that some revelation would be made that might 
lead to the arrest of the party or parties engaged in the 
atrocious deed. 

Not later than a month or two ago, I read in a spirit- 
ualistic paper, of the city of Boston, — conducted, by 
the way, with great editorial ability, — a communication 
from the boy murdered ; but which contained no clue 
that could direct detection safely and judicially to any 
desired result. 

In the written communication, signed "Isabella 
Joyce, " to which I have alluded, there are references 
to parties that had been previously arrested or suspect- 
ed. She, however, distinctly exonerates the young 
man of the factory, whose flight is as yet unaccounted 
for; but whose innocence is beyond all question. She 
speaks, also, of that inebriated unfortunate to whom 
Dedham jail has become a matter of practical and sug- 
gestive recollection. The name of that eminent indi- 



128 WAS IT A GHOST? 

vidual known to the police and the public by the 
euphonic appellation of Scratch Gravel, makes no figure 
in her revelations ; though he confessed to many circum- 
stances that would have led in ordinary cases to his 
implication in the deed. His admissions were tortured 
by over-zealous detectives into positive confession ; but 
after strict comparison of his statements, made under 
the pressure of prison and terror, or rum reaction, with 
the exact incidents of his maudlin stammerings and 

CO O 

stutteriugs, he was given up as not worthy of belief, 
though he madly made the attempt to get himself 
hanged. 

It is my intention to give merely the pith and essence 
of these strange writings, — having placed the original 
papers in the hands of my publisher, — where any per- 
son, curious in such matters, can examine them. 

The girl commences by appealing to her mother, and 
declaring that she cannot be happy until they have 
found that "terrible man." She cries frequently to her 
mother, as if under some great spasm of alarm, — hints 
at certain persons, — exonerates others, who were sus- 
pected, and in such manner as to remind us of the ter- 
rible ravings and charges of the "afflicted children" 
who figured as the juvenile fiends and denouncers of 
the Salem Witchcraft tragedies. 

In her outcries she speaks of a returned soldier, and 
checks her mother's suspicions, that appeared to have 



WAS IT A GHOST? 129 

gone astray in the wrong direction, and then directly 
charges the crime upon our poor dilapidated young 
friend, whose greatest misfortune it was to have been 
drunk on that fatal day, and been whipped or blackeyed 
in the evening. 

The girl proceeds with repeated exclamations of 
Mother ! Mother ! and emphasizes the sufferings through 
which she passed. Be it remembered that she speaks 
only of murder throughout her disclosures, if disclosures 
they can be called. 

Her second declaration is more minute and connected, 
but still it is a jumbled and very unsatisfactory narra- 
tive, or rather child gossip, of the circumstances and 
incidents as they occurred previous and up to the in- 
stant of the catastrophe. She again speaks of a soldier, — 
the one ivhose hand was cut; says she saw him in a gar- 
den as they passed along, — the garden across the brook ; 
that he followed them into the woods. She now goes 
back to her trip out of Boston toward the wood, and 
tells that they got out at Burroughs Street, walked up 
the plain or plank (hard to decipher) , till they came to 
a juncture of the road where it crosses the track of the 
steam cars, then to the right, and round a store or stone 
house to the left, over the brook to the other side. 
She expressly and suddenly declares, at this poiut of her 
recital, that she does not remember Mm, After thej r 
climbed over the gate (supposed to be the gate very 



130 WAS IT A GHOST? 

near where she was found, and which opens from the 
Dedham road ; there is another gate between the murder 
spot and Mr. Motley's house), they saw the man. He 
followed, but up to that moment had not spoken to her. 
He now seems to have turned back, but, changing 
his mind, returned quickly and addressed her. At this 
she became alarmed and fled ; he pursued. There is 
much confusion here, — a scuffling and tussling of sen- 
tences as if a mimic was giving to the life some 
quickly whirling scene of trouble and irritation and sus- 
prise, wherein there was the essence of a great danger. 
It is a confused statement of Johnny's having spoken 
of the sheep (Mr. Motley's sheep down in the valley graz- 
ing at the time, watched by a vagrant boy, afterward 
examined by the authorities, and found to be no wiser 
than the flock he watched). She says she does not 
remember exactly — speaks of a knife which she tried 
to get hold of — of his cutting himself with it — of his 
throwing it into the wood. (If he did, he must have 
gone back for it and rescued it, for no such knife was 
found after a vigilant search over the whole locality.) She 
exclaims, " He murdered me!" — that he was scratched 
on the face and neck, and bears the marks "now," — at 
the time of her manifestation at the spiritual sitting. 
At this point the paper is filled with wild and alarming 
cries to her mother. The idea presents itself again of 
a mimic reacting a scene in which the soul is driven to 



WAS IT A GHOST ? 131 

the very verge of madness by that dread fiend called 
Terror. The voice seems to pierce the ah; in its shrill 
proclamation of intense and terrible agony, and anon it 
subsides into stifled sobs and ejaculations of how much 
she suffered while the black deed was done, — how 
" sick " she was. After that outburst of mad appeal and 
piteous mourning she resumes her narrative, and de- 
scribes her murderer. He wore blue clothes, and looked 
like a soldier ; but not a soldier just from the wars. (A 
soldier loafing after his laurels had withered in bar-room 
atmosphere, I suppose.) She fixes his nationality dis- 
tinctly, — an Irishman. It was one o'clock, she says ; but 
the writing here is blurred and crossed, and very diffi- 
cult, if not quite impossible, to make out and determine 
whether it is one or two o'clock. Her brother, she 
says, ran for help, and the man ran after him and 
killed him and came back to her. This statement is 
signed "Isabella Joyce." 

The other portions of the page of foolscap, on which 
her hand appears, is covered with a lively display of 
all sorts of penmanship, — the idle signatures of a small 
party of the other world's inhabitants, who, it would 
seem, were in Isabella's company. 

Again she resumes control over the writing medium's 
hand, and says, — 

"Johnny was dead, and the man went off after I 



132 WAS IT A GHOST? 

died. He went down the other way to Boston. He 
will be found." 

We have nothing more from the spirit of the girl (I 
speak now without entering into any question of the 
authenticity of these communications, leaving my reader 
to dispose of that enigma, as may best suit his temper 
and convenience) , but the father makes his appearance 
on the scene and endorses his daughter's testimony ; but 
singularly neither witness offers to give the name of the 
designated soldier. The spiritualistic theory is that 
they could not do so, because he was a stranger to both 
of them, and consequently while they could see his 
face and clothes, they could not tell his name. The 
case is similar to our own daily experience in our tran- 
sient meeting with people on the street, — a passing and 
silent interview, in which nothing is discovered save 
the recognition of a person and no more. 

The revelation of the father is to the effect that he 
knows where the man is, and will follow him to the 
end. 

One part of his statement I suppress, because it 
comes directly within the province of the law officers, 
and might direct suspicion upon a possibly innocent 
man. 

Three years ago, it is asserted by those who believe 
in this extraordinary doctrine of the power of the dead 
to express themselves through the living, this man, 



WAS IT A GHOST ? 133 

Stephen Joyce, declared that by the fifth of the month 
of July, eighteen hundred and sixty -five, the murderer 
would be in the hands of justice ; and how many months 
have come and gone since that spirit entered the mystic 
witness-box, and foretold such sequence to the tragedy, 
and yet without fulfilment ? I am sorry that he was no 
true prophet, — no wiser in a ghostly form than in the 
fleshly substance. He is not half so good a ghost as 
Hamlet's father was. The Dane went straight to the 
point, and told the truth and nothing but the truth, 
while here we have the spirit of the girl upon the stand, 
and she rambles in her talk without the aid of the great 
legal screw of cross-questioning, designating nothing 
that is tangible, indeed giving false clues to the mur- 
derer, and screaming, w Mother ! Mother ! " as if she 
would pour into the listener's ear some faint echo of 
those dread cries that rang amid the gloomy woods 
when the soul of her was stabbed out of her. 

The ghost of the murdered King of Denmark spoke 
the truth, as other ghosts by judicial testimony have 
done ; but they were the old-fashioned ghosts, standing 
by themselves without the aid of human machinery, 
without the table or the easily assimilated trance, re- 
sponsible for their coming and for what they told or 
what they desired to be done by their informing. They 
came and made short work of it, impressing belief by 
solemn utterances or majestic gestures. In this case 
12 



t 

134 WAS IT A GHOST? 



again, the man, who should have been interested more 
than any other man, comes through the arm and 
fingers of a stranger, a living being, and is assumed to 
have written out, at that solemn investigation, a depo- 
sition, — not made upon the Holy Book, holier than all 
books, but with lips sanctified b}^ the kiss of death, — and 
vaguely points to some unfortunate, and declares with 
all the potency of his supernal condition that ere the fifth 
of the approaching month the discovery would be 
made, and the hands of the law laid upon the person of 
the murderer of his children ; and the fifth of that long- 
passed month lies strewn with the leaves of several 
autumns, buried far back in the dead annals, and no 
revelation has confirmed his prophecy. How is this? 
Or was it, as I have said before, left to these pages to 
revive that miserable event, and glare it to those eyes 
that have so often seen the vision of the dead ; to awaken 
in that drowsing conscience the phantoms that he had 
half lulled to sleep, and force him to some act by which 
the law may be able to read, without the farther aid of 
business mediums, the mark of Cain that God has put 
upon his brow ? 

Who knows, and who can tell as yet, the meaning 
of my ghost that came to me upon the hill ? 

It was not with any sinister design that the doctrine 
of spiritualism, or its practices, has been introduced in- 
to my narrative. . It formed no portion of my original 



WAS IT A GHOST? 135 

intention ; but I found it impossible to refrain from giv- 
ing publicity to documents that had been found of 
sufficient importance to attract the attention of the 
authorities. The spiritualist is able to take care of 
himself and his belief. Such communications might be 
used to a fearful and fatal purpose. The criminals en- 
gaged in the perpetration of a crime could, if such 
testimony was of any judicial weight, arrange a circle, 
produce the manifestations, or the similitude of mani- 
festations, and direct attention to certain innocent 
parties, when suspicion would give time for the real 
culprits to escape. Every one knows how easy it is to 
work through the agency of a religious sentiment, and a 
very large class of people, habituated to the belief in 
spiritual revelations as inculcated by the spiritualists, 
receiving impressions in that way, would be hard to 
believe otherwise than as the spurious spirits asserted. 
Crime would thus become more dramatic, and the con- 
sequences of such interference on the part of a religious 
organization might lead to the overthrow of all the 
purposes and powers of civil authority. Happily, I am 
confident no such construction can be placed upon the 
operations and revelations of the authorized spiritualis- 
tic media. I do not know exactly what view they take 
of the knowledge presumed to be possessed by the 
murdered regarding the murderer. To reveal simply 
the name of the person, taking for granted that the 



136 WAS IT A GHOST? 

power exists according to the doctrine of spiritualism, 
would be of no use, unless a train of circumstantial evi- 
dence could be intimated, by which the law could de- 
velop a legal connection between the accused and the 
crime. There have been several instances, in this 
country, in which testimonious ghosts have enacted im- 
portant parts. Some of these are upon the public record ; 
others in private circulation. There was a case some 
fifty years ago in Virginia, when, if I recollect correctly, 
the ghost of a Mr. Clapham met a man upon the path 
in the mountain, nearly opposite to the famous Point 
of Eocks, on the Potomac, and told him where his 
will could be found, — the absence of which had involved 
his widow in vexatious and tedious litigation. The 
will was found and the question of right established in 
her favor ; and I myself have partaken of the hospitality 
of that generous lady in the years gone by, when peace 
and plenty abounded in those beautiful valleys. As a 
matter of curiosity, I will give in brief, a singular case 
that happened in Scotland, and which goes to establish 
my theory of the injustice that may be perpetrated by 
the assertions of persons using the simulated spiritualis- 
tic agency for the detection of crime. The Scotch 
rebellion of 1745 compelled a larger amount of vigilance 
in preventing its recurrence than it possibly had 
taken to subdue it in the first instance. Troops were 
scattered among the highlands, for the purpose of 



WAS IT A GHOST? 137 

arresting all persons using arms, and enforcing the 
orders of the British authorities against the wearing of 
the clan tartans. Among these troops was Sergeant 
Arthur Davies, who is described as a bold and reckless 
man, careless in exposing himself openly in those wild 
and hostile glens, and among a people conquered but 
not won. Davies was in command of a squad of four 
men, and was stationed at Dubrach, near Braeman, 
then a desolate and dangerous district. 

On the 28th of September, 1749, Davies left his bar- 
racks, with his command, to meet the troops posted at 
Glenshee. The sergeant never returned from that ex- 
pedition ; for, wandering off alone to hunt in his usual 
careless and defiant mood, he was murdered. 

Two men Duncan Terig, alias Clerk, and Alexander 
Bain MacDonald were suspected, but, for five years, owing 
to the disaffected temper of the people toward the foreign 
troops, no steps were taken to arrest these suspected 
men ; but at length on the 3d of June, 1754, nearly 
five years afterwards, Clerk and MacDonald were tried 
at Edinboro' for the murder of the sergeant. This 
singular evidence was adduced upon the trial. 

Some time after the murder, Donald Farquharson, 
living in Glenshee, had been informed by his neighbor 
Alexander MacPherson, that he (MacPherson) had been 
visited frequently by an apparition. It was the ghost 
of Sergeant Davies, who insisted upon having a burial of 



138 WAS IT A GHOST? 

his remains. This MacPherson had declined to have 
anything to do with. On this the spectre had bidden 
him apply to Donald Farquharson . Together they visit- 
ed the spot where MacPherson said the remains were 
lying ; Donald giving as a reason for going his fear of 
being troubled by the grave-seeking ghost of the slaugh- 
tered Saxon. 

The witness described the finding of what was left of 
the skeleton of the unhappy warrior. They were satis- 
factorily recognized by certain incontestable signs. 

MacPherson's description of the ghost as it appeared 
to him was this : A figure clad in blue. He appeared 
at night ; he was in bed ; he rose and followed it to the 
door. "I am Sergeant Davies," said the spectre; and 
then he related the facts of the murder, and pointed out 
the place where his body or his relics could be found. 
The witness had asked the names of the murderers. 
The ghost declined, upon the ground that he could not 
reply to a question, but would have told if he had not 
been asked. The ghost had visited him again, but this 
time totally denuded of clothing, — but always desiring 
to have his body buried. The body was subsequently 
properly interred. Again the ghost had come to him 
and had announced his murderers, — " Duncan Clerk and 
Alexander MacDonald," — the prisoners then at the bar. 
The witness was asked by Mr. Macintosh, counsel for 
the prisoners, what language the ghost spoke. "As 



WAS IT A GHOST? 139 

good Gaelic as ever he beard in Lockaber," said MacPher- 
son. "Pretty well," commented Mcintosh, "for the 
ghost of an English sergeant." The facts turned out 
to be that MacPherson had been in the employment of 
Clerk, and. a disagreement had arisen between the two 
men. MacPherson had often charged Clerk with the 
murder, and on this Clerk had promised to do every- 
thing for him if he would only keep his suspicions secret. 
But stronger evidence was produced against the pris- 
oners. A man named Cameron had seen the murder 
perpetrated. He saw Clerk and another man fire sim- 
ultaneously at the soldier, and he saw him fall ; but he 
was deterred from making these facts known' to the 
( authorities for fear of incurring the animosity of the 
Highlanders, who thought it no great harm, but perhaps 
a merit, to shoot down one of the hated invaders. 

Curious to relate, the prisoners were acquitted. The 
evidence against MacDonald was not clear ; but no doubt 
existed as to the guilt of Clerk. MacPherson was 
prompted to the accusation against Clerk by motives of 
personal malice, and, having become possessed of Clerk's 
secret, he w T as anxious to gratify his hatred. Fear of the 
popular hatred, if he lodged a simple accusation against 
his victim, on account of the abhorrence in which an in- 
former was particularly held at that time, and the more so 
if the information was directed against a native in favor 
of the dominant race, he was obliged to invent his ghost- 



140 WAS IT A GHOST? 

story, and, thus appealing to popular belief in the super- 
natural, effect his purpose. But the jury would not 
believe his story, for it was known that he had discov- 
ered the sergeant's remains before he told of the ghostly 
visitations, which proved that the marvel was an after- 
thought. 

Sir Walter Scott edited an account of the murder for 
the Bannatyne Club, and Mr.' Hill Burton has included 
the story in his narratives of Criminal Trials in Scot- 
land. Sir Walter, relating another trial where a ghost 
attempted by a second party to affix his murder upon a 
certain person, gives the following remark of the pre- 
siding judge upon the responsibility of the ghost testi- 
mony : " Stop ! " the Judge interrupted, gravely ; " this 
will not do. The evidence of the ghost is very much to 
the purpose, no doubt, but we can't receive it second- 
hand. None can speak with a clearer knowledge of 
what befell him during life. But he must of course be 
sworn in the usual way. Call the ghost in open court, 
therefore, and, if he appears, the jury and I will give all 
weight to his evidence ; but in case he does not come 
forward, I cannot allow of his being heard, as now pro- 
posed through the medium of a third party." Up to 
this date it is not known whether the bailiff has made a 
return of the summons or not. We presume not. 

But was it a ghost that confronted me ? 

That question, now that time is progressively dimming 



WAS IT A GHOST? 141 

the vividness of the impression that I received when 
first I saw that something on the brow of the hill, rises 
to the tribunal of my own investigation. I am as 
anxious to have the mystery solved as my reader possi- 
bly could be ; indeed I am more anxious than any other 
person could be. Dim as it sometimes appears to my 
mind's eye at times, there are occasions when it assumes 
all the exactness of an incident that transpired but a 
second since. I see it cross the wall, advance out of 
the shadow into the light, stand still, then whirl or wheel, 
make one human-looking step, and vanish. Will I ever 
see it again ? That is another question that disturbs me 
some. I cannot do but wait ; but with what feelings, 
wait? You, in your fair room with gas a-lit, or reading 
in the broad-falling down of sunlight on this page, cannot 
conceive. Put out your light and let the room grow 
dark, and pause and think, and then perhaps, despite the 
adamantive philosphy of your unbelief, you may recog- 
nize the sentiments I have ; or on some still and lumi- 
nous night, moonless, drive out to that old wood and by 
yourself, even now, with such great washings of rains and 
cleansing of snows and storms of wind, go to the rock 
where the girl was found and see how your nerves will 
quiver, or how your heart will throb ; or, passing down 
the road, draw rein at the cottage where I stopped, and, 
saying naught to any one, place yourself where I stood 
and wait. 



142 WAS IT A GHOST? 

• I myself would not willingly try that visit over again, 
not 'that I dread anything of harm from such an act, 
but because I have been there once before and have had 
enough. But if I never see that strange visitor again, 
I will see the murderer. Of that I am convinced. I 
have firm reliance in law when it is honestly employed 
to detect crime or protect the wronged. I have faith in 
that subtle sympathy, which connects us with the dead. 
I feel that without it, love would be but a thread broken 
by the last breathing of our lungs, and memory nothing 
but an intellectual frigidity, to be melted into mist as 
we approach the haven of the hereafter. The dead ap- 
peal to us by the mesmeric agency of their immortality ; 
they throw out, through every movement of the world's 
circumstances and events, a suggestion of their needs, 
their condition, and their destiny. They are like the 
history of the past sublimated by the eloquence of im- 
mutable truth, and are sanctified by a sleep that has 
eternal life within its closed lids. They have, too, a 
sympathy in retort with us. As naught of the material 
can suffer annihilation, so the soul, being iudestructible, 
permeates the air we breathe as do those revived plants 
of perfume that last fall we might have fancied dead and 
beyond all chance of life again. If that vision was a 
ghost, its purpose will be revealed ; for it is impossible 
to suppose that the Ruler of the Universe, who says a 



WAS IT A GHOST? 143 

sparrow shall not fall without his knowledge, would 
permit so strange an occurrence to happen without 
having an intention. What that intention was, I for 
one, if only one, shall wait patiently to see. 



THE END. 



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